Hold Steady // Heaven Is Whenever Stream

Cheers to Steve for the tip - stream the new Hold Steady album in its entirety here. Playing in London June 22 (of course, Franz won't be there). Boys and Girls in America still one of the best albums this side of the millennium. Who was talking about soundtracks to the summer?

Well, it was me and I apologise for it is far too early for any of that nonsense.

Guru RIP // Livin next door to Alan #LAST

Sad time for rap as Guru died last week. So it was probably retrospectively bad timing for Freddie Foxxx (with whom the whole Livin' Next Door to Alan thing started) to release a diss-track a couple of months back towards one of the guys who gave him support through and introduced him to my radar. Still, as Woody Allen (probably) said, life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Freddie Foxxx : 81 Bars of Murder

Jonathan Jeremiah

Always nice to see some young soul talent coming through. In a small pub, this guy sounds wonderful but I have the slight feeling that recorded it might just sound like very bland dinner party music. I'm not even going to listen to this. That's right folks, it's a post-and-hope.

Jonathan Jeremiah : Happiness (Quiet Village Remix)

El Scorchio

Summer isn't here, but the mild warmth has started the search for its potential 'soundtrack'. Listening to two potential candidates - Delorean and Jonsi - reminded me of the heady days of UK pop-garage. File under 'guilty pleasures'. Or just man-up [edit: or woman!] and say you like it.

Delorean : Stay Close
Jonsi : Around Us (Acoustic)



And maybe, just maybe, happy hardcore. That might be a stretch.

Pete and the Pirates

I like Pete and the Pirates. And I think it's ok to like them. Although it's been so long since they released anything, I'm not sure how the blogosphere views them. Perhaps this is my chance.

Their 2008 record Little Death is diverse - although the singles "Knots" and "Mr Understanding" are both the type of songs which are so perfectly crafted they seem to have written themselves, the rest of the album is slightly more jagged and perhaps better for it. The melodies are strong and the sound is fairly raw, with clean guitar lines and double vocals. Not to overstretch the analogy, but like Joyce's Dubliners it's easy to pass over the songs without a strong reaction, yet each song stands up by itself and repays relistening. The technique of "scrupulous meanness" may be applicable to both.

Unfortunately, Pete and the Pirates seem to be the type of band destined to be forgotten. When searching Hypem for their stuff, a few bloggers said "I forgot about these guys until my itunes shuffle brought them around". I have no idea why this is, but I did the same myself. Perhaps a second album would remedy this situation, although I'm unaware if there are any plans laid. The ball's in your court.

Pete and the Pirates: Jennifer
Moving
Mr Understanding

Popped

Having not made any moves to even begin to follow up on my lazy claim that I would listen to pop music, I thought I should probably start. And then I was struck that the question I was really asking was, is blogging really worth it? Is a Twin Sister demo cassette A-side download really a better investment of time then the latest Kings of Leon album (although I suspect most of us can have a stab at the answer)?

Wind back to last week, at an Ellie Goulding gig. She is pop, I thought. I like her. You know, she does really good songs like 'Black and Gold' or 'The Wolves'. Skip to the end and her penultimate song of a distinctly average set is a distinctly average 'Roscoe'. The common theme, of course, is that none of the above are Ellie Goulding. So, maybe, just maybe, I might pack in the whole pop idea and go back to just listening to blog-hype hot air releases. Or I could just go out and see the sun.

Midlake : Roscoe

Force Majeure

So the volcano at Eyjafjallajokull finally went off. Clouds of ash preventing air travel. People moaning about not coming home. People moaning about not going on holiday. People moaning about how quiet it is with no planes. Incidentally, Ladbrokes are offering odds on one of the three leaders saying Eyjafjallajokull in the next debate (via John Lanchester). I don't know if you can put a stake on correct pronunciation though.

But I feel we're missing an opportunity to celebrate all the volcano themed music out there. Volcanoes are, after all, the orifices of the earth; linking inner and outer, they both create (see the Giant's Causeway) and destroy (Pompeii). And if you present me with an opportunity to put on "Eruption", turn up the volume and "ROCK OUT", I'm going to seize it with both hands.

Islands - Volcanoes
Van Halen - Eruption
Snoop Dogg - Sexual Eruption (remix - via Yousendit)

Male Bonding

Anyone who knows me will know I'm always up for a bit of male bonding. So when the Londoners of the same name came along, well I was only too keen to give them a go.

Raucous garage punk? Distorted vocals? Raw frenetic playing? Homoerotic? All there. They ticked all my boxes, and I'm sure they'll do yours too.

Check their new record Nothing Hurts, out May 11th, for more Male Bonding action. Apologies for the semi-innuendo throughout the post - there really are no overtones in the music itself. If anything, the male bonding harks back to a more innocent age, when a man could give a fellow man a firm handclasp on the backside without any questions asked.

Male Bonding: Year's not Long

Germs // Throwback

Whilst Germs lacked something in the way of melody (as far as punk is ever melodic), Not All Right does ironically get it right. All of it.

Germs : Not All Right

Aloe Blacc // I Need A Dollar

Just stumbled across this little funk-gem from Stones Throw.

Aloe Blacc : I Need A Dollar

Twin Sister // EP, D/L and other abbreviations

Some dudes on some other blog started a record label, some more followed suit and then it got popular. One of the most recent is The Curatorial Club which put out a Twin Sister cassette ('curated', which presumably means the net effect is slightly better than the chart show cut-and-pastes back in the day), a collection of demos. Which, as it turns out, are rather good. You can download the A-side to that tape here. You can also download their new EP Color Your Life, for free (just for the next week or so), right here. Or if that all seems like too much effort, you can just listen to the below:

Twin Sister : All Around And Away We Go

Harlem - Hippies

Thank you, Harlem, for the joy of choosing the post for this picture. Both band and album names offer a wealth of opportunity, rich with associations and potential meaning. Perhaps apt for the band themselves - as with Girls and Sonny and the Sunsets, they are more than the sum of their influences (which are considerable). Harlem play melodic guitar rock which is warmer than the epithets of lo-fi, garage or scuzz would allow.

Sounding both timeless and original, Harlem stay the right side of derivative, and wear their influences proudly. It raises the question (as I found myself asking with Girls), what is it that makes this good, when so many other bands imbued with 60s and 70s resonances just come across as second-rate? I don't know; perhaps it's a case of right place, right time, perhaps there is a charisma there missing from other bands. Either way, it works.

Their 2nd album, Hippies, is out now on Matador.

Harlem -Friendly Ghost

Gay Human Bones

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel

The opening words of Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s first full-length, F#A#oo (I can't do the infinity sign on Blogger it seems) hark back to my own adolescence, providing a suitably doom-laden soundtrack to the trials and tribulations of early teenage life. Listening to the record straight through, on a Year 10 history trip to the First World War battlefields (an oddly apt setting for the music), was a pivotal moment of growing up. This is how music should be. Lush, rich, apocalyptic, imbued with a sense of the Canadian highway and the desolation of the open road, GYBE! (before the exclamational shift) paved the way for countless post-rock acts yet created a sound entirely their own, adopted to some extent by the various offshoots from the collective.

Well, they're back. GY!BE, as they are now, will be curating ATP at Minehead, 3 - 5 December 2010. Although the cynical side of me lumps this in with the disappointing reunions of other childhood heroes (Pixies, j'accuse), GY!BE are supposed to be sensational live (I never got to see them) and have enough creativity and integrity to ensure that this (don't call it a) comeback is purely for the right reasons.

If I had the time, money or inclination to spend a weekend at Butlins, I would go and see them. Instead I will be revising their back catalogue and deciding whether the world still needs GY!BE.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls

Dead Flag Blues

09 15 00 Part II

Livin Next Door To Alan... 7

This one is only a few years old. Like all the best - angry, smart and coherent.

Killer Mike : That's Life

Pop Music

I saw a woman on the tube the other week and, for a multitude of reasons, she didn't look like she invested any time in seeking out music. At the time I was awash in musical snobbery, feeling ever-so-smug listening to the recently leaked Caribou album, tickets firmly in hand to the upcoming Phoenix gig. And, as I was looking at this woman, she pulled out her iPod and I wondered just what exactly she was listening to. She had an iPod, so she must have at some point actively chosen and downloaded something to listen to. But what (first guess: Black Eyed Peas)? The answer:

Conversely, I was also recently talking to someone even coolier-than-thou, who joked "What do I need with another Beach House or Caribou?".

Beach House : Norway

And that brought it all into focus. Perhaps I could do with a little perspective. There is plenty of other music out there. I don't even know what is in the top ten. And I should. So, in the interests of balance, I need some more pop. Something to take me past Kelly Clarkson without having to delve into tired covers from X Factor/Idol (yes, I am aware of the irony here). Does this sort of thing count?

Elvis Costello : Pump It Up

As always, even pop doesn't have to be major label, so here are a couple of favourites from 7" pop masters Neon Gold. First up, their new single from Mr. Little Jeans:

Mr. Little Jeans : Angel

And 2009's take on Prince-styled 80's pop:

Yes Giantess : Tuff 'n Stuff

Happy Easter

A very happy Easter to you all.

The Hold Steady : How A Resurrection Really Feels

The Futureheads

Yes another absurdly literal photo to accompany the post. A long time ago, when Chris and I were still unmolested by the grind of life, we made our way over to Newcastle to interview Ross from the Futureheads. Back in the first half of the 2000s, the "regional" music scene was burgeoning. Singers were not only unabashed to celebrate their provincial origins, they celebrated their idiomatic idiosyncrasies and placed oddly-pronounced vowel sounds at the front of their vocal mixes.

So it's nice to hear again from the Futureheads, a band who have always maintained my respect. Perhaps it's the tribulations they have suffered - over-hyped, lumped in with many lesser bands (dare I say Maximo Park?), dismissed as "post-punk revivalists," dropped by their record label after two albums - along with a sense that there was always more substance to them than angular guitar, frantic hi-hat bashing and the aforementioned accents.

So they return with "Heartbeat Song," which I had been informed contained more than a whiff of the Ramones, but which I found closer to Blink-182. Having said that, I do like it - a sweet crafted piece of radio pop-punk with the pervading flavour of the North-East. The vocal harmonies are as good as ever, the sentiment is delectable and the chords are all in the right places. What's not to like?

The Futureheads - Heartbeat Song