On first listen, I very nearly threw this CD straight down the chute marked 'Sounds like Keane' (you know, the one that leads to the amenity dump), but fortunately for the London four piece, I was in a forgiving mood and spared them the tip for a redemptory second listen. And a bloody good thing I did as well, for taken in the right mood (slightly miffed, rather than outright depressed) 'Downtime' is a pretty decent collection. Opener 'Broken Roads' is all twinkly keyboards and downbeat vocals, a trick they repeat again on 'Falling Behind' to even greater effect, its epic sweeps and subtle percussion combining with a rich vocal to create a building melancholic verse/soaring chorus combination that is exemplorary in its restraint and timing. 'Take a Deep Breath', on the other hand sounds like The Levellers and should therefore be killed with fire to prevent the chance of infecting the surrounding area.
It seems like ages since I last had a proper demo to review. You know the sort - CDR with track titles written on in green felt tip & a slightly fuzzy black & white photocopied cover in a plastic sleeve. Ah, takes me back.
Anyway, misty eyed reverie aside, Bedhed are a timely reminder of what websites such as ours should be about. For while the ready formed chart-straddling prowess of the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Pink Grease is nice and all, Bedhed are still at that exciting stage where you can see the potential shining through, but a fair bit of polishing remains to be done before they can show us how good they can be.
The debts owed to the likes of The Smiths, Husker Du and a host of late 80s/early 90s indie bands are a little too obvious at the moment, but the interplay of lead and backing vocals on 'One Less Light', the subtle atmospherics of 'Blood Love Time' and the brooding, almost Interpol like opening to 'Ghost' offer a glimpse of what this band could be capable of given time to develop their own sound.
Ostracoda are a five piece from Norwich whose approach to rock / metal is far too “nu” for my liking. The overly angst ridden vocals are backed by extremely competent musicianship but sadly it’s so sterile as to put Busted to shame. This is angst rock by numbers with none of the passion and integrity they claim to love in music, and sadly for them just a few years late to capitalise on the Limp Bizkit boom. Having said that this is in no small part due to the mixing which has given the songs almost zero punch and conveys no energy what so ever. Because of this I must state that I can only comment on the CD, I would hope that live they are a totally different proposition…
Review by Tommy L
The one truly great track from FF's debut album that isn't 'Take Me Out' or 'Darts of Pleasure', 'Matinee' has by far the best lyrics on the album, recounting the tale of a shy romantic who becomes such an overnight success that he gets to be interviewed by Terry Wogan. It is an old, old story (well apart from the Wogan bit), but no less effective for it, and there are some great lines along the way.
Musically, it's more along the 'Darts of Pleasure' mid-tempo, vocal driven road than the jerky disco with great big fuck off hooks that 'Take Me Out' provided, and as a result will probably not scale the dizzy hights of its predecessor, but it's still a great song, and another step along the road to become an important and influential band.
It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I was reviewing their rather tasty single 'Move', but The Chinatowns are back already with the imaginatively titled 'Third EP'. However, were it not for the stylish see through cover (liking these very much guys, keep 'em coming) I would hardly have recognised this as being the same band.
While 'Move' was a three minute journey of eerie atmospherics, backed up with a garage guitar punch, here we get jauntily fringed indie pop with perfunctory rhyming and more than the occassional nod to Teenage Fanclub. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on personal preference I guess, but personally I'll stick with 'Move' thankyou very much.
Sophia's 'People Are Like Seasons', from which this single is taken is a sporadically brilliant piece of folked up lo-fi Americana interspersed with prolonged patches of depressingly ordinary chart gazing indie (see Delays review below). So, can you guess which strand was plundered for the first single?
Yes, you've guessed it, 'Oh My Love' is a bland, inoffensive ColdplayTravisStarsailorKeaneStereophonics retread, full of empty sentiment and heartfelt, earnest lyrics, which adds absolutely nothing to the genre, but will most likely be fawned over by the music section of The Guardian.
Sparkly Horse shaped b-side 'Someday' goes some way to repairing the damage, but is sadly swamped by the MOR-ish balladry of the ironically titled 'Genius' and 'I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You', a song so lacking in interest that my ears fell asleep halfway through listening to it.
Must try harder.
Pink Grease continue to infect the seedy underbelly of pop with their glam punk sleaze on another superbly lurid slab of plastic. Main track 'Fever' is a runaway train of anthemic choruses and rock n roll guitars that sound very much like the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disasters' pervier little brother, while flip side '2003' is coated in electro so grimey you'll be bathing in Ajax for a month just to try & get the smell off.
This single is everything the Pink Grease record isn't - safe, flacid, devoid of any kind of sexuality, any excitement, any point to its existance. It's like someone has resurrected Sleeper, decided that maybe they were just a little too edgy for today's market so removed what little subtance was there in the first place and replaced with blue eyeliner and a spangly miniskirt. Things manage, almost unbelievably to to get worse on b-side 'Bim Bam Boom', a song with keyboards so 80s they would have embarrased Europe and a chorus most Eurovision entries would pass on for lack of intellectual content. Utter, utter shite, and the fact that they've taken their name from a truly great record makes it all the more shameful.
I've just been listening to this on repeat solidly for three quarters of an hour, yet if you pressed pause and asked me how it went, I wouldn't be able to recall a single note.
Fortunately, for reviewing purposes I can type as I listen, which enables me to report that this is your average sweeping orchestral number, with Jeff Buckley 'inspired' vocals and jangly guitars. It's the not as good follow up to the successful, if slightly dull top 20 hit 'Long Time Coming' though, and will therefore be loping apologetically from a stereo near you any time soon.
Finally free from the iron grip of despotic tyrant Damon Albarn, indie guitar genius Graham Coxon is at last truly able to weild his own fantastic vision and skill to hone the perfect guitar pop single, hewn from strands of the purest Britpop (the first time around) classics, or so the story apparantly goes.
In reality what we get is Graham living out his Buzzcocks fantasies with a single that could quite easily have come from any of the last four decades. It sounds a bit like a less dramatic, but better version of The Skids 'Into the Valley'. By far the best Coxon solo release to date, and his vocals have come on no end, but still a little way to go until he matches his best moments with Blur.
Alternative Rock Idol graduates make good. Nope not Bloc Party, nor Art Brut, or Ludes, or Special Needs, but My Red Cell: yet another band to rise up from the Paradise Bar's sticky floorboards and into the nation's hearts.
To be honest, when they played ARI back in November, they had star quality written all over them - all they needed were the tunes to back up the swaggering stage presence, and with this White Stripey swamp blues number, they're well on their way. It's all in the shoutalong chorus and freeflowing fretwork here, and the quality's kept up over the 4 tracks, with the mental roar of 'Going Out For Nothing' matching the title track for anthemic choruses and jerky stop-starty bits.
The first I heard of this lot was a support slot with Detroit pals The White Stripes at Brixton Academy which seems like an age ago.
Back then, I couldn't quite make up my mind whether I liked them or not; they seemed to be doing all the right things - weird, discordant squiggly noises, unpredictable time changes and lots of throwing themselves about the stage in a way that suggested 'Hey, we're arty and intellectual, but we still know how to party'; but somehow it didn't quite seem to be pushing the appropriate buttons. Still, at least they were better than The fucking Go, who still stand in my memory as a shining beacon of shitness, and a warning of what giving all the support slots to your best mates regardless of musical merit can bring.
Anyway, fast forward to the present, and 'Pink', which for a pleasant change, has been sent to me on vinyl (not pink though sadly), and I'm left with a similar conundrum - fuzzy bass, surreal shouty lyrics (just what is a 'trash bag helmet' exactly?) and jerky rhythms that change at the drop of a hat vs scrappy production and a general sense of directionlessness. This time he latter just about wins out, but there's better to be found on a b-side cover of Beck's 'Fume', which sounds like an unhinged 'Goo' era Sonic Youth feed through a fuzz machine, and is therefore one of the best things to have hit my turntable in many a moon.
There seems to be an abundance of this sort of thing around at the moment - instrumental/spoken word bands with unusual names and lengthy titles (ref: Explosions in the Sky, Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies, Methodsent, etc), and to be honest, unless it's done extremely well, I don't particularly care for it myself, so can these two bands do anything to stoke some enthusiasm for the format?
Well, not really. Tempertwig's 'Bratpack Film Philosophy' is a pretty decent stab at the genre and provides plenty in the way of delicately intertwined guitars, detatched vocals and interesting time signatures without doing anything particularly unexpected, while Air Formation's 'Seethrustars' is a spangly piece of not very much, with a looping guitar & bassline and some shimmery keys. Not bad, but doesn't do enough to really make me care about its existance.
A double header of Clinic-y lo-fi from Dragons & Windmills signings The Chinatowns. Opener 'Move' is suitably atmospheric, with croaky vocals and unsettling backing in the verse, followed up with an explosive chorus. Could do with a bit of keyboard lurking in the background, but otherwise pretty much faultless. 'Temptation' is a little more straightforward - chugging bass opening, Americanised vocals, then descend into messy shouty pre-chorus before regrouping and reminding themselves that they can do far better, with a gloriously ramshackle, perfectly off key chorus; then repeat. Beautiful. Nice see through cover as well.
As Fierce Panda celebrates 10 years of releasing occasionally great, but mostly average indie rock, they unleash this - a straight outta 1996 slab of occasionally great, but mostly average indie rock (except without the occasionally great bits).
Not so much 'the way it's meant to be' as the way it usually turns out, The Features give us 100% effort in this perfectly servicable slice of slightly rocking guitar pop, but there's nothing here, even on the blandly quirky b-side 'Buffalo Head' that sets them apart from the douzens of Panda bands that never quite made it.