Did Not Chart

An interview with Judy Evans from Girls At Our Best!

2012-02-20T04:52:00.000-08:00

This interview is from the excellent Dreams Never End fanzine (1988, I think). Indiepop fanzines in the late 80s had two ways of guaranteeing sales: the old-fashioned way of badgering people at gigs to buy it; or having a flexi disc to persuade people to part with their cash.

Dreams Never End had that rare thing - a splash. Who could resist sending off for a publication featuring an interview with Judy Evans from Girls At Our Best!? Not me.
This is incredibly difficult for me to remember - was it 2 world tours or 3?

While not wanting to be ‘ideologically sound’, one must realise that beauty, sex & desire all play an enormous role in the portrayal & success of bands & denying that is just naïve & dishonest. I think the most successful bands challenge accepted ideas of desirability, ‘beauty’ & sex, they manipulate & subvert them for their own ends. What I suppose I’m saying is that all good bands by their very nature are sexy & attractive in some way. (As a matter of interest, we all agreed that I should never appear on record covers, posters etc.)

A Sarah Records Story

2012-02-15T13:30:00.000-08:00

Sarah Records is the subject of both a documentary and a book, each currently in progress. Now seems a good time to revisit the label, its triumphs, failures and influence.

I was there at the start, as a fan, less so during the middle and hardly at all at the end. This is my history and how I saw things evolve. It’s a mixture of opinion, fact and contemporary sources quoted from fanzines. I’m not expecting you to agree with all of it, but if you do want to invite me outside for a full and frank exchange about the quality of The Secret Shine’s output, I'm not interested.

Sarah’s first release, Pristine Christine by The Sea Urchins, came out in November 1987 when I was 14. I’d caught the end of the indiepop explosion a year earlier and found my musical home. I consumed as much as I could - records, fanzines, late-night radio. Despite the excitement and the samizdat’s sabre-rattling belligerence, the scene I felt I was becoming a part of in 1986 was giving way in 1987.

A small part of this was down to the bile spat at indiepop by the music press. I know now how the music press works, and accept that they’d moved on to a new scene. Yet it still strikes me as odd that a record as great as Sally Cinnamon by The Stone Roses was ignored in the summer of 87. I thought it was indiepop then. I still do.

Similarly, The Vaselines’ debut single was overlooked that same summer. They would remain underground until Nirvana became popular and covered them. I didn’t think The Vaselines were indiepop then; I thought whatever it was that they did was brilliant. I still do.

There was, then, hardly any appetite for indiepop or the guitar underground in 87. When Sarah launched, it became the UK’s last hurrah for post-86 indiepop. This was a label that would run on the ideals of punk’s democracy, a distinctly anti-rockist impulse (no sexpot poster sleeves) and the promise of not ripping off punters (no 12” singles with extra tracks).

Bob Stanley, just about the only hack with a soft spot for indiepop at the time, gave Pristine Christine single of the week in the NME and greeted The Orchids’ debut warmly. The good NME reviews continued with a runner up single of the week for Anorak City, until you got to the part where reviewer Simon Williams described Sarah Records as being "appallingly twee-sounding”.

This was the same reviewer who five years later celebrated Heavenly’s Atta Girl as a “riot grrrl anthem” not realising the lyrics were written by the male drummer. A minor point, I know, but I use it to illustrate that when the music press did pay attention to Sarah Records, it was often through a prejudiced lens or just plain wrong.

I thought most of the early Sarah releases were great – a few were average, one was terrible – but it seemed we (this was an imaginary ‘we’; restricted access to gigs and absence of friends with similar niche musical interests meant that even if I was alone, I definitely felt part of a community through sharing fellow fans’ passions) for a couple of years were fighting a good fight just by buying the records.

There were other UK indie labels that were putting out brilliant pop records in 87-88 – Medium Cool and September stand out particularly – but who weren’t associated so strongly with indiepop. This was largely because they didn’t set out on a crusade as Sarah did; I strongly suspect that neither labels thought of themselves as indiepop nor wanted to identify so strongly with a small scene.

Sarah, perhaps unintentionally, painted themselves into a corner. I might think the label would have been better if they’d signed The Pale Saints instead of related band Gentle Despite and that Slowdive were a better bet than offshoots Eternal. But even if they’d wanted to sign those bands, could they have afforded the studio costs? I’d guess not.

The important thing here is that it wasn’t my label. Good indie labels sign only what they like with scant regard to commercial potential. However, what I think eventually happened is that Sarah contracted to the point where they’d only get demos from bands who were inspired by bands on Sarah.

You can hear the diminishing returns on some releases. I wasn’t buying that many of them four years after Pristine Christine. When I went bought the latest Sarah release in October 1991, the debut by The Secret Shine, the man in the shop asked if I bought every release on that label. It was the last time I could say yes because The Secret Shine record was so shit.

Why did this record provoke such revulsion in me? Because I thought I was part of a club, a group of like-minded people, and I’d been badly let down. I can see now that this is incredibly silly. None of my favourite acts of the previous four years were on Sarah. Take 1988, for example. I was obsessed with East Village. Elsewhere, Creation were really ruling the school: My Bloody Valentine had turned the world upside down; The House Of Love were on fire; Felt had released The Pictorial Jackson Review; and The Jasmine Minks hit a new high with Another Age.

Still, I think it would be unfair to claim there was a sonic hegemony on Sarah’s roster. You wouldn’t put The Field Mice’s house epic Missing The Moon…actually, outside of The Field Mice’s occasional forays into New Order inspired territory and The Orchids’ Ian Carmichael dance mixes, this is a question of degree.

There are probably only a few hundred people in the world who could say there’s a big difference between any of Sarah’s acts. Even if broader brush strokes could separate Action Painting! (who were grouped with the new wave of new wave scene) and Shelley (who were affiliated to the Romo lot)- and even differentiating those might be a push - everything else was ‘Sarah Records’.

The problem I have is that Sarah became synonymous with indiepop. There were imitators, of course. In Honey Hunt fanzine (April 89) Bob Stanley wrote:"Things have reached a pretty pass… there’s the folk who really misunderstood the 85/86 punk rematch and keep faith in Woosh and The Nivens and all the other no-hope tail enders named after dead film stars and dead holiday resorts."

I didn’t care much for the Woosh records. I’m really pleased the fanzines existed and I bet for anyone in Newcastle the gigs they put on were absolutely vital. What was happening in indiepop outside of the UK at this time, though, was far more exciting than anything Sarah’s cottage industry and other even smaller operations were keeping alive.

Bus Stop’s first proper single in 1988 was Sunflower by The Springfields. This had been released on Sarah a few months earlier, but had meant to originally come out on Bus Stop first. That, and signing St Christopher, got Bus Stop tagged – unfairly – as the ‘American Sarah Records’. The Waterbomb fanzine (issue 6) put it very well in 1991: “What (seemingly) began as America’s answer to Sarah Records has now ended up as one of the finest psych-pop labels of all time!”

Just look at the line-up: Engine No 9, Bag-O-Shells, The Sneetches, Velvet Crush, Honeybunch, The Caroline No, Matt Allison. These would surely be the first names on the team sheet for any label wanting the best in pop at that time.

Where Sarah had kept the indiepop flame flickering post-86 in the UK, in the USA the baton had been picked up with a new enthusiasm by a number of labels. After Bus Stop, Slumberland started brightly with noise, pop and really noisy pop. They raced out of the traps with Black Tambourine, the first American band to take The Shop Assistants’ template of girl group sass and Ramones suss. Then there were Velocity Girl and Small Factory, easily my two favourite singles bands of the early 90s.

This sort of scene wasn’t going on in the UK. There hadn’t been anything like it since 86. Loads of labels and fanzines popped up. Terry Banks, of US band Tree Fort Angst and English act St Christopher, told the American fanzine Amish Ways in 1992:

“As far as response to pop stuff here vs in America, I think, while Britain has certainly put out more than its fair share of pop stuff, the “scene” here isn’t much different than it is in the States. In fact, I find the “scene” in America much more honest, enthusiastic and open than it is in Britain, which is very stifled.”

Ric Menck, then of Choo Choo Train, explained his band’s name and the nascent US indiepop scene to the Fine Art Of Shoplifting fanzine (issue 3) in 1989:

“People never forget it. Over here you guys have got this whole indie cutie scene, but in America we don’t have a cutie indie scene or anything. There is no scene. I think it’s more…punk-rock – like The Sex Pistols, Every time you say it to somebody they’re either embarrassed to say it or they automatically hate it.”

The US just didn’t have the deep-seated vitriolic hatred to indiepop that existed in the UK. The Close Lobsters were asked by Scottish fanzine Do It For Fun in late 89 if they were getting more attention in the USA:

“The answer is a resounding yes. We’ve come back from there, 2 weeks in all and go back for a month soon. Not only that, our records seem to do pretty well especially in the college circuit. The reason for this is that Americans are far less self-conscious about most things, music among them, so the Lobsters’ chequered past, tattered present and shattered future (in UK terms) as shambling C86 anorak blah fucking blah is considered less than irrelevant.”

The UK music press back then had a very powerful hold on taste making. However, the indiepop scene didn’t die in the UK because of the music press; in fact, it didn’t die at all. There were fewer UK indiepop releases in the early 90s than in the 80s, it was more underground than it had been, but there still some fantastic records being made. Very few of them to my mind were on Sarah, though.

Without Sarah at this time, however, it’s unlikely that Even As We Speak would have ever come to the UK. Did you see them live? They were amazing. Seriously. I saw them as often as I could. They were always red hot.

Even As We Speak were one of many Australian bands who had been making astonishingly good pop records in the 80s and were almost completely ignored outside of their home towns. What Melbourne's Summershine label did from 1990 was to impose a sense of order on the Australian scene and export it worldwide. You’d have to ask label boss Jason Reynolds or any of the bands from the 80s if they thought then they were part of an indiepop scene.

My feeling is that bands playing a very melodic brand of guitar pop in a country dominated by pub rock and a macho music culture were automatically oppositional, in the same way the anti-rockist mid-80s indiepop scene had been in the UK.

Years ago, I asked Robert Forster if he thought that his androgyny and The Go-Betweens’ melodic pop had encouraged younger Australian bands in the 80s like The Lighthouse Keepers, Charlotte’s Web and The Palisades.

He seemed astonished, and pleased, by the question. The old charmer exclaimed: ‘Yes! I’ve never been asked that question before and I’m glad you raised it, because I think it’s one of the most important things The Go-Betweens have done and it’s not recognised’.

The one connection that can be made between Australian indie and what was going on worldwide in the 80s is The Cannanes. They released a tape on K and in 1987 a single as part of K’s International Pop Underground series. I bought those releases. I didn’t think then they had a lot in common with the UK indiepop I was listening to.

Inevitably, too much probing here will lead us into the conversational cul-de-sac ‘what is indiepop’. We can more usefully explore the global situation by looking at indiepop in general as an important part of the post-punk subculture.

Nirvana got The Vaselines to support them in 1990, something no big UK band ever did for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Americans, Nirvana weren't blinded by the British music press's homophobic obloquy towards indiepop. Secondly, punk's legacy of an uncompromised mode of expression was embraced most enthusiastically by indiepop and hardcore acts. There was a shared egalitarianism, if not quite a shared record collection. Thirdly, the infrastructure left by the punk revolution - shops and venues, particularly - had to keep alive the communal spirit if only to survive; the survivalist techniques of indie had been honed in punk's aftermath, when there was no one dominant underground musical form. This communal spirit was still alive in the US mindset.

You could see the same machinations at work when Fugazi got post-Heavenly outfit Marine Research to support them on their 1999 European tour. This esprit de corps in the American underground has been central to the health of US indie. Its decline in the UK after 1986 led to the stigmatism of indiepop and the creation of Sarah, a label that focussed on indiepop as an ideal.

The broader range of the American labels who were influenced by Sarah (as well as Postcard, Creation and Rough Trade) made them more attractive to me. There was no fight against a dominant, reactionary music press in the US. There seemed to be an emphasis on getting records out to be heard and to build something new, rather than – valuable as it was in many ways – keeping older traditions alive.

As I saw it in the early 90s, most of the world’s best indiepop was coming out of the US and Australia. Things were relatively quiet in the UK and seldom inspiring on Sarah. I’m not criticising Sarah here. Like I said, it was an indie label and they released what they wanted. If I were to love everything on a label, I’d have to start it myself and run it on my own.

I didn’t do that. I’m very grateful that others did so I could see some cool bands and make some lifelong friends.

I accept that I could be romanticising records from America and Australia over British ones. You know, hunting down imports back then was like finding a message in a bottle. There’s nothing like distance – and happenstance – to burnish a romance.

So in the mid-90s when I used to hear what seemed like an endless stream of Swedish bands playing a diluted version of the – admittedly sometimes already quite thin – Field Mice’s electronic indiepop, I let it pass. In the same way that post-1996 I give bands that sound like the first two Belle and Sebastian lps a wide berth. Just as I didn’t let what was sometimes a rather incestuous sound from the later Sarah bands divest me of my money.

When Sarah shut its doors in 1995, it barely registered with me. The newsletter they posted out in July 1995 to announce their closure had an interesting comment: “And even if it’s true that most of those who used to write to us when we first began have, over the years, gradually disappeared, wandered off into…what…jobs, marriages, babies, the backstreets of Naples – it doesn’t really matter, because you were there at the time.”

It’s true, you know. I knew someone who was obsessed with Sarah at university. Then he found jazz. Sarah Records played an important part in my life for a few years; for some it still does. I’m less enthusiastic by the idea that some people hold that it’s a paradigmatic absolute of indiepop. It’s not and nor do I ever think it meant to be. It’s part of the picture. It was fun while it lasted.

The Hairs - I've Been Working Out

2012-02-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

The Hairs’ new 7” ep is a mere £4. Any profit from my purchase has probably covered the recording costs. This is a straight up pop assault by way of early Elf Power psychedelia, Poundsign melodic blitz, Let’s Wrestle hardcore flirtations and The Glory Box’s rugged tunes.

There’s every chance The Hairs don’t know half those bands. What they have in common, though, is capturing the essence of untamed beauty red in tooth and claw. There might be a Hairs compilation in a year or two called They Could’ve Been Bigger Than The Flaming Lips. And really they should be.

Buy your red vinyl record. As I’ve covered the recording costs, all sales now are clear profit for the band.

Listen to I've Been Working Out

Trixie's Big Red Motorbike

2012-02-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

If punk’s utilitarian manifesto was summed up by “this is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band” and its DIY ethos by the Desperate Bicycles’ declaration "it was easy, it was cheap - go and do it!" then by the time those calls to action had hit the Isle of Wight in the early 80s, they’d been taken on board by brother and sister Mark and Mel Litten as ‘we have a schoolgirl’s recorder, a beaten up cheap guitar and we can hit things for percussion’.

It should have been a mess. It wasn’t. If The Undertones sang about chocolate and girls then Trixie’s sang about boys and the Marine Girls. Today people would call it twee. Newcomers with no baggage might call it outsider art. I don't think either of those descriptions are accurate.

Even though it sounds like it was made in total isolation, the spirit of “Disco kids have missed the groove we’re in/What a shame they’re all the same” from Trixie’s Groove is a reminder of indiepop’s oppositional stance and belies the idea that indiepop somehow all came after Orange Juice. More likely, it all came out of early TVPs records and the associated scene. Simply, these songs have the innocence of first-time pop music made by teenagers that have lasted because they've got a rare melodic gift.

All Day Long In Bliss, a compilation, is out on Valentine’s Day. It misses out their self-titled jingle from the Accident Records compilation:

There are different versions of songs on the Accident LP that aren’t on All Day Long In Bliss. Here’s You Took Him Away From Me (Tea-Time Mix).

And here’s a lyric sheet for all your karaoke needs.

Mazzy Star - Common Burn

2012-02-01T03:24:00.000-08:00

Mazzy Star’s comeback single hit the record shop racks this week and opens with the enigmatic appeal of “Simple things like your overcoat and your beauty that’s still burning me”, kind of like Harriet Brown by David Roback’s old band Opal: “Harriet Brown wears a man’s felt hat that she bought in Spain”. That'll be £8.99, sir. What recession? I’m taking it just for that beginning.

This is vintage Roback and prime Hope Sandoval. Ry Cooder’s spacious desolation, Neil Young’s countrified desperation and the Paisley Underground’s smart 60s pop touches all swim in Mazzy Star’s psychedelic slipstream. If the new album's of this standard, it might just be their best yet.

It didn’t take 16 years to make this single. Mazzy Star work at their own pace. Always have. This Melody Maker interview from 5 January 1991 goes some way to explaining their outlook.

Eux Autres - Sun Is Sunk

2012-01-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

Lee Hazlewood told Nancy Sinatra to sing These Boots Were Made For Walkin' like "a 14-year-old who fucks truck drivers". Eux Autres' Heather Larimer sings with the cool detachment of a woman who's just had congress at a truck stop and found her partner disappointing.

Eux Autres' new six-track ep Sun Is Sunk sets dirty garage rock against west coast sunshine pop. The growling guitars and neon-lit lyrics of Home Tonight could be off Lou Reed's Transformer; the duet between Heather and brother Nicholas on Ring Out is a rematch of Hope Sandoval and Jim Reid on the Mary Chain's Sometimes Always.

There's a strange warmth to the outsiderness of Eux Autres' pop. No matter how stark the music, how flickering the emotions, they pull you in every time. The House Of Love used to do that, too, a long time ago. Right Again by Eux Autres

Allo Darlin' - Capricornia

2012-01-24T04:46:00.000-08:00

Capricornia is a song about Australia from an album called Europe. After Tallulah, it's Allo Darlin's second song about Australia and it similarly throbs with the ex-pat's aching longing.

The Australian theme is underscored by Capricornia's driving jangle and energy bearing a musical kinship with Sunlight In A Jar by The Lucksmiths.

You can place both those songs in the area of pop's playground marked 'offspring of I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better by The Byrds'. It's a great place to be and marks Europe as one of the albums to watch out for this year. Allo Darlin' - Capricornia by Slumberland Records

G. Green - Tequila Sunrise

2012-01-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

The first great record of 2012? Right here thanks to California's G. Green. While we're waiting for a new Box Elders record, this roaringly stupid and stupidly infectious rock'n'roll polaroid will do nicely, thanks very much. If you like The Babies, Mazes, Times New Viking and ever thought that Big Dipper were fucking ace, then this will bake your biscuit.
It's released in a couple of weeks on flexi.

Robert Forster's beautiful low-slung ass

2012-01-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

An interview with raconteur, wit and gentleman Robert Forster is always good value. My favourite is this short Q&A with NME from early 1993.

What would be the last thing you'd sell for money?
My beautiful low-slung ass.

Dean's Eleventh Dream by the James Dean Driving Experience

2012-01-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

I know, it's the start of the year and perhaps I should be declaring what the year's greatest new group is, but in the absence of credible candidates these past three days, let's call for a James Dean Driving Experience retrospective.

11 songs mining The Byrds' jangle with rare aplomb, similar to what Primal Scream did for a short time and what Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes did for a couple of years. Only better. They were better than most.

Their debut single Dean's Eleventh Dream is one of my favourite singles of all time. Send all of their songs back out into the world and there'll be new fans: as long as there are romantics, daydreamers and teenagers there'll be a new audience to love the James Dean Driving Experience.

Friends Of The Family

2011-12-31T08:08:00.000-08:00

Friends Of The Family were a great little band who lasted two singles in 1987. Their debut Rotten To The Core remains my favourite, but as that's been uploaded by others before here are two songs from their second single, the Three Fat Men On A Bicycle ep:

Lucibelle Green

Katrine

Their schoolfriend Clare Wadd interviewed them for the final issue of her Kvatch fanzine. I promised someone (Matthew from Shelflife, I think) on a messageboard a few years ago that I'd upload that interview once I'd dug out the fanzine. The interview covers flexidiscs, 12" singles and major labels.

All indiepop fanzines in 1987 covered these topics. If you were really unlucky you'd also get a vegan cake recipe when what you actually wanted was another insight from David Gedge about the convenience of the Newport Pagnell service station on the M1 from Leeds to London.

A Black Tambourine advert

2011-12-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

There were some compelling reasons to buy Black Tambourine's last record. The excellent Emily's fanzine listed five of them.

I think this was 1992.

Bobby Gillespie is full of shit

2011-12-23T03:18:00.000-08:00

Bobby Gillespie, traditionalist, revivalist and leader of one of Britain's premier Rolling Stones tribute bands, is this week moaning about rock music being "too conformist and normal". To make matters worse, he's using his showbiz pal Paul Weller as a reference. This is like Paul McCartney hiring Ronald McDonald as the spokesman for his latest vegetarian crusade.

That's right, the same Bobby Gillespie who's made a career out of plagiarism, relying on another band member to write Primal Scream's decent songs (Jim Beattie) or producers to make his songs sound less conformist and normal (Andrew Weatherall) or just covering a Stones song and passing it off as his own work by giving it a new title (Rocks).

"It seems to me that if you were a serious young person and you had something to say that you'd be looking at other disciplines." Sorry, Bobby, but you're little more than a grumpy old man who's out of touch. Claiming that bands who've come after The Strokes and The White Stripes have given up trying to be experimental is a strange stance.

Of course bands who are influenced by The Strokes and The White Stripes are going to be retro and looking at rock's past with reverence rather than disdain. The Strokes were a case study in style over substance from day one: their debut single The Modern Age ripped off David Watts by The Kinks. Which band was it that covered David Watts? That's right, your mate Paul Weller's band The Jam. But to consider the past 10 years of music only through the prism of The Strokes and The White Stripes bands is a straw man attack.

There are loads of fantastic rock bands out there. My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything is enjoying status as year zero for a lot of groups right now. Listen to Heaven's Gate or Exlovers, for example. Yeah, I know Isn't Anything is 23 years old. When you were a young man making records in the 80s, your key reference points were from 23 years before then.

OK, I'm sure you'll cite getting Kevin Shields in Primal Scream as a sign that you're way ahead of these young scamps who are influenced by MBV. Thing is, Bobby, that Shields' creativity was spent way before he joined your band. The baton had been handed over. You must know that most bands have a very limited time when they're at their best and making music simply because they have to.

You should listen to Weekend. I expect Shields would admire - envy, even - them. They take pop songs and give them a viking burial in gales of effects and distortion. No one else is making music like that. No one else can.

To disregard these exciting young bands and dismiss all music based on your very narrow listening is simply holding up the white flag and saying 'I surrender to pop music's unceasing novelty. Give me what I know, for it makes me comfortable and confirms my prejudices'.

Sure, the most exciting and creative music is mostly made by youngsters. I wouldn't say Primal Scream were ever that exciting or creative as they were always too in thrall to the past to shape the future; likewise, no one could accuse your mate Paul Weller of being much more than a revivalist. Even as a teenager in the late 70s, Weller was reheating the mid-60s mod sound. If he were really a modernist and his next record reflected a love of the latest underground dance sounds, his fans would be responsible for funeral pyres of Fred Perry t-shirts burning across England's suburbs.

You and Weller both rely on being normal and conformist to sustain careers and fan bases. If Primal Scream were American, they'd be seen as a third-rate Aerosmith and a second-class Black Crowes. For a long time it was really only the British weekly music press, a medium dependent on controversy and internecine scraps to fuel its weekly word count, that enjoyed your ill-informed diatribes. Now reduced to just the NME, the weekly music press doesn't need your pantomime villain theatrics. Which is just as well, as the few who might be most interested in reading about the next Primal Scream album will be subscribers of the cosy monthly heritage music magazines.

2011 has been interesting musically in many respects, not just for the cascade of thrilling guitar bands. Take the number of amazing records made by older folk, for instance. My favourite album of the year was No Time For Dreaming by Charles Bradley, a 61-year-old soul singer's debut record. At his London gig in the summer he stood on stage and thanked everyone from his heart for being there. It was no platitude, either: midway through the set, he walked through the audience and hugged everyone he could.

I'm not saying you should do that, Bobby, but if you had some of that humility, if you appreciated having fans instead of thinking of them as idiots you can master with some secondhand tunes and bullying rherotic, you'd be more likeable. And if you listened to some of the rock underground's latest sounds, you might find some much needed inspiration.

Sundray Tucker: If It Was Me

2011-12-21T00:54:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of this blog (hi Brogues! hello Sir Elton!) will remember mention of Sunday's Ain't Got No Problems last week. Sunday might be more familiar to you as Cindy Scott for her northern anthems, the a and b pairing I Love You Baby/In Your Spare Time.

Released under her real name Sundray Tucker in 1981, If It Was Me is a straight up soul stepper you can file under modern classic.

Standard Fare: Out Of Sight, Out Of Town

2011-12-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

Standard Fare are a rock band who play pop songs. Their big bold songs have killer grooves balanced by intense vulnerability. They glean with the shimmer of The Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow and carouse with the jubilant punch of Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak. Their second album Out Of Sight, Out Of Town is brilliant, dramatic and clever from start to finish.

Brilliant? The second song 05 11 07 reminded me immediately of Steve Earle’s I Ain’t Ever Satisfied; much later, a paean to an estranged relative, Half Sister, wonders “do you like Steve Earle?” This is a record made by music fans still in love with the magic of pop. You know at the beginning of the girl group floorshaker Dead Future that Emma Cooper and Danny How will engage in a call-and-response. Rather than make Standard Fare predictable, they sweep you up in their joyous celebration of pop music.

Dramatic? Take your pick. Any one of these songs is so powerful, whether in gigantic tunes or romantic desolation, it could raise the roof of the Royal Albert Hall. Just in Older Women you’ve got sapphism, inter-generational sex and bitter jealousy.

Clever? Again, so many choices, but just listen to Crystal Palatial. The opening line “I met her on a penny day” is a reference to the cheap entry shilling days at the Crystal Palace exhibition in 1851 which were quite the pick up joint. The break in the narrative for the authorial voice to advise “smoking’s bad” tells you more about the singer’s feelings and the relationship’s future than a whole verse could.

Emma Cooper’s bass has the same bounce that Andy Rourke used from his background in a Manchester soul band to lift The Smiths above the indie treadmill. Likewise, Danny How could expect Johnny Marr to give him one of his old guitars out of respect. I don’t much care for most bands who sound like The Smiths – I certainly don’t much care for The Smiths after 1984 – but in Standard Fare you’ve got a band that take the best of some great acts (Bruce Springsteen, Thin Lizzy, The Smiths, Steve Earle, for instance) and make it all their own.

I don’t know how many favourite bands I have; what I do know, though, is that when I listen to Out Of Sight, Out Of Time, Standard Fare are my favourite band.
Standard Fare - 051107 by In House Press

The Voices

2011-12-14T05:48:00.000-08:00

The highlight of the excellent new Eccentric Soul installment, The Nickel & Penny Labels, is both sides of the Voices' 1967 single, Fall In Love Again/Forever Is A Long, Long Time.

The Voices, all heavily pregnant with their first children during the recording, reconvened two years ago for an interview with the great Chicago Soul radio programme Sitting In The Park.

The Voices provided back up on one of my favourite Chicago soul singles, Ain't Got No Problems by Sunday. And here they are singing along to that, getting goosebumps, sounding great and looking fine. Now if you'll excuse me, I have something in my eye.

The Jhamels: A Road To Nowhere

2011-12-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Jhamels did superior sunny California soul with one eye on late night smoky nightclubs. I know about 5 singles - all miniature mod club gems - but A Road To Nowhere from 1967 is the classic. Thousands of great soul songs from this era disappeared, but I've no idea why this hasn't been reissued. Pop perfection in two minutes. You couldn't really ask for more.

PMRC Indie: the sounds and swears of 2011

2011-12-06T02:57:00.000-08:00

Each December I make an overview of the latest sounds for friends who don't have the time to keep their fingers on the pulse of what punk-ass kids with battered guitars and venereal diseases are shouting about in the squalor of their own making. Equally, it's for friends who do listen to a lot of new music but are happy to have their suspicions confirmed that actually they've either grown out of this crap or that they've heard it all before.

2011 has been a great year for music. Anyone who disagrees surely hasn't been looking hard enough, or we can just agree to differ. This is a celebration, not an argument.

These 25 songs are a representation of the richness and creative splendour of 2011. It's a guide, issued to friends in the hope that they might find new musical loves, not an awards ceremony.

FAQs
PMRC? What the fuck?
Some recipients have kids. They might want to play Pink Motherfucker, for example, after the watershed.
C'mon, loser, just put up a download link.
Look, this is for friends who might buy stuff or could possibly just enjoy the compilation. I'm not giving away people's music. It's like a compilation tape.
What no Amor De Dias? It's an amazing album.
It is, but everyone's already got that album.
So you live in a world where if your friends have bought only one record, it's the Amor De Dias album?
"Bought" might be putting it a bit strongly, but yes.
Do you like actually know Amor De Dias?
We're on nodding terms at showbiz parties. No more, no less.
I am not your friend and to be honest I'm happy with it staying that way, but can I have a copy?
Seriously? Drop me an email.

Kissing Clouds - Sweet Bulbs
Black Eyes - The Twerps
Boys with Girlfriends - Bad Banana
Pepper Snake - The Cactus Channel
Ghetto Street - (thee ultimate) BABY J
Baby Your Lovin' - Electric Empire
Things I Like To Do - Lord Echo
No Sir, I'm Not A Christian - Terry Malts
I Will Kiss Anyone - Love Cuts
No Offense - SLUTEVER
Cult Hero Jonathan Lewin - Small Reactions
Senator - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Carol Stream - Four Eyes
Pink Motherfucker - Vein Cranes
Pushing Onlys - Woods
Tear It In Two - Real Numbers
Date It - Golden Grrrls
Privilege - CUFFS
Beg Me - DeRobert & The Half-Truths
Duh x12 - The Hairs
The Best Is Yet To Come - Mr President
Should Be Gone - The Feelies
Indiana Girls - The Happy Thoughts
Why Is It So Hard? - Charles Bradley
Fingers Of Dawn - The Bats

Weekend: Red

2011-12-04T01:29:00.000-08:00

Weekend - Hazel by Slumberland Records
The most astonishing record of 2010 was All-American by Weekend: released in demo form, it summoned a violent upheaval that destroyed all other guitar bands in its wake. It was the sort of sonic destruction that happens rarely and leaves you open-mouthed and gasping for air: remember when you first heard My Bloody Valentine switch to You Made Me Realise? Weekend bolted out of the blocks full-throttle with a game-changer.

A year on from the Sports album, Weekend have been struck by lightning again. Somewhere in Red's volcanic maelstrom there are pop songs being kicked in the face. I can sense the ghost of AR Kane; there may be other reference points, but with Weekend there's the distinct idea that they're on their own.

Weekend's music is so impressive that other bands are bound to try to bottle their alchemy, but Weekend are surely the only band who can find the light in their own dark trail.

Yes, this ep came out ages ago. I held on for the delayed release of the splattered vinyl:

The Jam and Cockney Rejects

2011-12-03T09:23:00.000-08:00

Probably more accurately 'Paul Weller and Cockney Rejects', England I Miss You was recorded in 1980, but its planned single release was apparently stopped by Weller. I have no more information than that.

My local second hand record shop got a stash of these in 1992. It's worth a listen.

Edwyn Collins - Down The Line

2011-12-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

"Just understand I've lost some ground...this abstract sense of being is over now, it's in the past." Edwyn picks his way through personal hope by way of George Jones country and torch singer tragedy. Tread softly: this song will break your heart. EDWYN COLLINS - Down The Line by Analogue Enhanced Digital

Down The Line will be released on 12 December through itunes. The label say there'll be something for us vinyl lovers. I hope that means they'll stick out Down The Line on 7". I have even greater hope that digital sales will see it secure the Christmas number one spot.

There's a press release:

EDWYN COLLINS – Down The Line. Release date 12/12/11

This iTunes exclusive album is by way of a calling card. Throughout 2012 AED will be dusting off the Edwyn archives and releasing all his solo albums, in pristine order and tied up with a metaphorical bow. Mindful of how hard to track down much of this material has been, now that we have control of it all, we intend to do it justice at last.

But to whet the appetite, here is Down the Line, twelve songs recorded between 1989 and 2001, most of them flop singles, as was his wont, but all standing up well, we would attest. They are accompanied by a set of photographs taken by Ben Redgrove at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last year. Oh yes, and a new song, Down The Line, recorded last month, for Edwyn’s next album, due summer 2012, tentatively titled, Understated.

Tracklist:
Hope and Despair
Ghost of a Chance
Graciously
Everything and More
If You Could Love Me
A Girl Like You
The Campaign For Real Rock
The Magic Piper (of Love)
No-one Waved Goodbye
Johnny Teardrop
Back to the Backroom
Down the Line

When The Go-Betweens were young

2011-11-22T03:50:00.000-08:00

"Yeah," Forster agrees, "the music they [the Postcard label lot] were listening to in Scotland we just hadn't considered. Like...Donna Summer, Stax and bits of disco."

"It also came out of seeing the Gang of Four," McLennan added, "and the similarity in our rhythms. That's the thing we really came back with - the interest in rhythm."

This interview is taken from Inner City Sound, a collection of Australian fanzine articles from the late 70s and early 80s. No, it's not the full interview. Put the book on your xmas list. In the meantime, from the same book, enjoy a photo of Robert, Lindy and Grant blessed by youth's blossom. Robert, you will agree, has already perfected the doomed artist look after studying his Bob Dylan photos.

Golden Grrrls: New Pop

2011-11-20T02:19:00.000-08:00

Glasgow's Golden Grrrls currently sound like the country's most exciting prospect: after the urgent buzzsaw riot of debut single Date It, the baton is passed to the snarling storm of New Pop.

They despatch New Pop in about 100 seconds in a blaze of fuzz and harmonies as if they were compelled to deliver it. There's nothing particularly new about their pop, of course, but every young band tries to reinvent the wheel: a handful manage it because of energy, passion, sheer class and alchemy. Golden Grrrls manage it and are way ahead of the pack. And before you ask, no, they sound nothing like the Shop Assistants. Leave those tired tributes to the American underground.

They played London twice this month and I only just found out. What a fucking loser.

Lord Echo: Things I Like To Do

2011-11-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

Lord Echo blazed a trail about this time last year with his Melodies album - somewhere in the world right now, a nightclub's walls will be bouncing to the sound of his inspired version of Sister Sledge's Thinking Of You - and the New Zealand master is back with a new single, Things I Like To Do.

It's got all the same ingredients as before - King Tubby dub, NYC disco, Latin horns, funked-out fuzz - and therefore is absolutely essential.
Lord Echo - Things I Like To Do by bastardjazz

Thee Makeout Party!

2011-11-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

This post was going to be about the Jacuzzi Boys and how their album Glazin' was the first record of theirs I'd bought in four years. I got to thinking about how the Jacuzzi Boys had changed from superior garage rock to punchy bubblegum pop, and how I'd pretty much ignored them in the meantime.

Why? Well, the amount of good music being released is always outweighed by the amount of time and money I have. Some things slip by the wayside. I think I get most of the great stuff and some of the good stuff. Glazin' is a good bubblegum album.

Then I got to thinking how Glazin' has got absolutely nothing on Play Pretend by Thee Makeout Party!, a bubblegum punk masterpiece that sounds like the Ramones' End of the Century if it had been produced by Kasenatz and Katz instead of Phil Spector.

Thee Makeout Party! are pretty low on most people's radars. Compared to them, Jacuzzi Boys are in the rock'n'roll hall of fame. The low profile could be explained by a few factors. There's the slow release schedule (about four records in 10 years). The Billy Childish-influenced band name is a red herring. Image-wise, they might look like paid-up members of the Carnaby Street Historical Reenactment Society, but they're finding their way via UK post-punk and AM radio rock and bubblegum pop. Their one album, 2007's Play Pretend, has songs on it called Raspberries and Wreckless Epic. You get the idea.

You know as well as I do that some great bands get overlooked. This isn't me griping about how Thee Makeout Party! are unjustly ignored. Bands like that are never going to be big. They could be bigger, for sure, but most importantly they could make another record.

Which reminds me: what the fuck are Skipper up to? It's been too long. Skipper are fantastic.

No Sir, I'm Not A Christian

2011-11-12T05:22:00.000-08:00

Wrecking-ball guitars, sledgehammer bass, a groove carved in stone, wit, sass and deranged feedback all in a minute-and-a-half. That's No Sir, I'm Not A Christian by Terry Malts. It reminds me of The Dragsters (does anyone remember The Dragsters?) and the Mary Chain and any number of firebrand punk kids who grew up on The Ramones and Spector.
No Sir, I'm Not A Christian by corey_lee
I slept on this record because I didn't like Malts's previous single. To be honest, I don't much care for the other tracks on this ep. No one's going to lose any sleep over that, I'm sure. I'm happy to pay a fiver for just that one 90-second punkpop peach.

There are singles I love so much I've never got round to playing the b-side. Another Girl, Another Planet is one of my favourite singles ever. I've played it hundreds of times. I've never flipped it over. I have got no idea what's on the other side of I've Got Wings by Ninotchka. My copy of Cold Game by Myron & E with the Soul Investigators is really scratchy because I got it about the same time I needed a new stylus. I was too busy playing the record to go to the shops to get a new stylus. I've still never played the b-side.

Sometimes, just one song on one side of vinyl can be all-consuming. No Sir, I'm Not A Christian is more than enough.

The Flying Nun story

2011-11-07T03:12:00.000-08:00

Flying Nun mainstay Shayne Carter (DoubleHappys, Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer) guest-edited New Zealand's Sunday Star Times magazine, published October 30, 2011. He did a brilliant job. The features are fascinating, stimulating, funny, charming and provocative. It's one of the best music journalism endeavours I can think of.

There's Martin Phillipps at home, there's Shayne Carter trying to trap Dunedin's alchemy (alochol, students, magic mushrooms growing in the harbour, winters that drag on for months: "you're braver when it doesn't really matter, less self-conscious when you think nobody's listening"), record shop owner Roy Colbert hilariously describing schoolboy patrons David Kilgour ("he always had a tennis ball in his back pocket...but maybe it was a puffed-up sock") and Alastair Galbraith giving the Queen the finger from the roof of his school.

At the very least, one of the UK or US music monthlies should reprint it. Ideally, Flying Nun should publish it as an anniversary pamphlet. Star on Sunday subscribers can access the complete magazine. There's a copy on ebay as I type. Before you secure a copy or Flying Nun license the articles, here are a few titbits:
The Clean

Look Blue Go Purple

Roger Shepherd

DoubleHappys dolls

2011-11-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

During these Flying Nun 30th birthday celebrations my DoubleHappys figures have made me the envy of my friends. Not for the first time, I want you to know. These cut-out-and-keep beauties originally came with the DoubleHappys' 1985 ep Cut It Out (yes, I do see what they did there).

You too can now have the ultimate in interior design:

Archers Of Loaf: Icky Mettle

2011-11-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

Icky Mettle, Archers Of Loaf’s first album from 1993, is being reissued in the UK. Yeah, it did get reissued earlier this year in the US by a different label. The music industry dances to its own tune.

Whatever year or country you’re looking at Icky Mettle from, though, it sounds great. It’s full of angry noise from the harDCore scene, it’s got that skewed post-punk thing going on that Pavement were doing, it’s got catchy college rock riffs and it thankfully had fuck all to do with grunge.

Icky Mettle is in parts classic, in places wonderfully stupid and always fizzing with energy. There’s waspish bitterness on the anthemic Web In Front ("you're not the one who let me down/but thanks for offering"); snappy wisdom on my favourite track Plumb Line ("you can blame on your hat the thoughts in your head"); and total psychotic delirium on Toast, in which nothing but noise happens for three-and-a-half minutes until the scream THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY TOAST.
Archers Of Loaf - Web In Front by FIRE RECORDS

They’re playing at Cargo on December 11. And there’s a press release for those of you who like even more facts:

‘Icky Mettle' (deluxe edition)' remastered and reissued
on Fire Records on December 5th 2011

Fire Records will reissue all four Archers of Loaf studio albums, starting with their acclaimed 1993 debut album 'Icky Mettle'. Re-mastered by Bob Weston and featuring new liner notes by Robert Christgau, Icky Mettle will come with bonus material (packaged as a second disc with CD, and double LP) including the entire Archers of Loaf vs. The Greatest of All Time EP as well as singles and b-sides from the Icky Mettle era. This special 'Deluxe Edition' will be available on 2xCD, 2xvinyl and digital download.

Their last studio album was released in 1998 and since then Eric Bachmann (vocals/guitar) has pursued work in Crooked Fingers. After lying low for 13 years Bachmann, Eric Johnson (guitar), Matt Jentling (bass) and Mark Price (drums) began rehearsing again in 2010 and went on to test the water with some live dates earlier this year. Picking up right where they left off Archers of Loaf's well received performances asserted that their noisy lo-fi indie had been sorely missed.

With the recent resurgence of lo-fi-Indie-watchimacallit bands, it has never been so relevant to unearth these early recordings from Archers of Loaf, who embraced similar do-it-yourself ethics to such astounding effect. The track "Web in Front" earned the band a spot on the 'Pitchfork 500', a list which compiles the website's favourite songs from 1977 to 2006 and whose recent review awarded 'Icky Mettle (Deluxe Edition)' with best new reissue and an unprecedented 9 out of 10.

The Impressions - It's About Time

2011-10-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

I've bought The Impressions' post-Curtis Mayfield albums more out of a sense of obligation than excitement. Even the Times Have Changed set, penned by Mayfield, is lacklustre. Two words, though, on The Impressions' 1976 lp, It's About Time, immediately quickened my pulse: McKinley Jackson.

You probably own or love a few records McKinley Jackson has been on. He led The Politicians, the house band for Holland, Dozier and Holland's Hot Wax and Invictus labels, so if you've got a Chairmen of the Board or Freda Payne record, then you'll know how he can marshal a band.

Not only is this album arranged and produced by McKinley Jackson, it's got Funk Brother luminaries James Jamerson, Jack Ashford and Eddie Bongo Brown, plus possibly 70's funk's greatest rhythm guitarist Ray Parker Jr (listen to the Honey Cone's Want Ads or Leo Sayer's You Make Me Feel Like Dancing for proof of his trademark choppy sound).

With Detroit's finest in the studio, the band is as tight as ten toes in a sock. The underrated songwriting team of Mervin & Melvin Steals wrote 7 of the 8 songs. What could go wrong? Nothing. Curiously, It's About Time remains obscured in soul music history's shadows. I recently bought a still-sealed copy for $5.

If you see it, or McKinley Jackson and the Politicians' 1972 lp, untrouser your wallet immediately.
The Impressions You'll Never Find

The Primitives Peel Session

2011-10-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

This Peel session comes from a time before The Primitives found studio polish and the charts. I reckon all those American bands of the past 5 years who sound a bit like the Shop Assistants might just have a fondness for The Primitives' raw melodicism as well.

I think this was spring 87. It shares tape space with sessions from Tbe Bodines, The Wedding Present and The Smiths anyhow.

Why upload this now? Well, The Primitives are playing at the Fortuna Pop birthday bash next week at the Scala - a few tickets are still available -and as label boss Sean Price once gave me free singles by Twinkie and Mogul, I owe him big time.

Am I going to the gig? No. I'm a humourless old shit who thinks The Primitives' best days are behind them.

She Don't Need You/Ocean Blue/Everything's Shining Bright/Dreamwalk Baby

About Lawrence of Belgravia

2011-10-23T04:19:00.000-07:00

Lawrence of Belgravia is a beautifully shot film. It's more of a portrait of an English eccentric than a straight biography. Large sections of the narrative are provided by journalists interviewing Lawrence. Despite Lawrence's often outre responses, director Paul Kelly cleverly lets the camera linger on each journalist a fraction longer than you'd expect, suggesting that maybe it's the journalists who are the bizarre characters.

This thoughtful approach to Lawrence might not satisfy Felt fans, people who value lyrical poetry, classic pop and intense intropsection but forget the downtrodden defeatism of the opening to Black Ship In The Harbour ("I was a pauper/I was second class/I was a moment/That quickly passed") or the, um, declaration in Declaration that "I will have as my epitaph the second line of Black Ship In The Harbour".

Felt lasted from 1979-89; Lawrence of Belgravia is about Lawrence from 1978- 2011. Felt are about a third of the picture, then, and the film is, rightly, a tragicomedy about a lost genius who has never quite managed to separate myth from fact or his ego from reality.

Lawrence, as the film makes clear from the publication of a medical report, has mental health issues. We're not told how serious these are, which suggests that parts of the film are, actually, more bittersweet than funny.

Of course, Lawrence is a man who wrote a song about the Rwandan genocide and called it Drinkin' Um Bongo. He is enigmatic beyond explanation; while Lawrence of Belgravia might antagonise a few Felt fans (especially those who never got to grips with either Denim or Go-Kart Mozart) it will please many more, even those with no appreciation of who Lawrence is, as a sensitive and touching portrait of an eccentric artist.

Felt fans can have Riding On The Equator, from their last ever gig (Lawrence said in the film that Felt would never reform, not even for £100,000):

Primal Scream's second Peel Session, 1986

2011-10-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

Primal Scream's second Peel Session from 14 May 1986 (at least that’s what it says on my tape) featuring Tomorrow Ends Today, Leaves, and Bewitched and Bewildered, and starring Jim Beattie. Primal Scream at this point are all about Beattie. Without him they would’ve been nothing. And after he left they really did become nothing (statisticians: I’m talking quality terms, not record sales).

The best members of Primal Scream in the mid-80s:
1. Jim Beattie
2. Thomas McGurk, Martin St John, Paul Harte
5. Anyone else I’ve forgotten
6. Bobby Gillespie. Fuck me, he was an embarrassment. Still is.

Lawrence of Belgravia

2011-10-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

Can everyone please get over this idea that Felt had a masterplan to make 10 albums and 10 singles in 10 years? They didn't. What was that Lawrence told Melody Maker in December 1989?

I'm really looking forward to the film. Lawrence is a fascinating character and Felt are one of my favourite bands. But the widespread swallowing of the '10 myth' means it's always mentioned when people write about Felt or Lawrence.

There are far more interesting things about Felt than one fabrication which has caught the media's imagination. Like why did a band with such a distinct aesthetic publish guarantees of authenticity on their albums? Or why did contemporary Lloyd "read Norman Mailer or get a new tailor" Cole hit the charts but not Felt? Or why when about to play a London gig in 1987 in front of major labels and publishers, a potentially career-changing night, did Lawrence drop acid? He left the stage after 30 seconds because "everyone's looking at me".

I expect Lawrence of Belgravia will provide some answers and provoke more questions. And the BFI have, by simply getting the title right, given the film more respect than the Barbican did when it showed 20 minutes of footage three years ago:

McCarthy - a Malcolm Eden interview

2011-10-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

"I was fortunate to catch a glimpse of myself in a cracked mirror at the age of three, and although others have come and gone, I have remained true to this sparkling vision."

"I don't really regard the lyrics as political, however I do tend to write about 'the world' rather than myself. This is a practice I would like to see encouraged in young shamblers."

This interview is reproduced from Simply Thrilled Honey fanzine, originally published sometime around September 87.

If anyone knows where Malcolm Eden is, or if dear reader you are in fact Malcolm Eden, London's fashionable Scared To Dance club is very keen to secure your DJing services in exchange for cash money.

David Kilgour plays The Clean

2011-10-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

David Kilgour plays in The Clean, obviously, but this is him playing The Clean song Draw(in)g To A (W)hole solo in 1991, in Invercargill.

Draw(in)g To A (W)hole is on Vehicle, a record as influential to the indie undergound as James Brown's Funky Drummer has been to hip hop. Yes, Vehicle should be reissued, or at the very least English Heritage should put up a blue plaque outside Blackwing Studios where Vehicle was recorded.

"Bob Scott wrote that bassline."

The Hairs live last week

2011-10-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is how it was: Buzzcocks spikiness, waspish Dunedin Sound jangle, short, sweet and dirty pop like Bee Thousand-era Guided By Voices, and the delirium of The Flaming Lips. Why can't more bands be this good?

The Hairs at Glasslands Gallery from Carlie Lazar on Vimeo.

It was a day in late September

2011-09-29T02:53:00.000-07:00

It's always worth checking out singles on Roulette, as you've a chance of digging up some buried treasure on the cheap; Geraldine Hunt's You Brought Joy is just such a find. Co-written and co-produced by Leroy Hutson no less - the man who replaced Curtis Mayfield in The Impressions before creating a fine solo legacy - this 1973 single is a 70s soul gem. The "it was a day in late September" thing? It's the song's opening, which has always struck a chord. That's all.

Big Troubles: Romantic Comedy - a review in pictures

2011-09-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Let's make this easy:

Let's make this even easier.

The Letter 5

2011-09-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

A one-shot act on Flying Nun, The Letter 5's closest cousin would be The Chills' stately semi-psychedelia of Brave Words and the precise classicism of Sneaky Feelings. The baroque pop of Haunted House is the strongest track out of the seven on their 1991 ep. This is all I know.

The Jesus and Mary Chain: Loud, Spotty and Weird

2011-09-13T03:34:00.000-07:00

The Mary Chain were Smash Hits' cover stars, 16-29 July 1986.

"Obviously I find him incredibly irritating like today and obviously he does with me too. When I was younger, I used to pour boiling water over his back."
William

"When we make a record," fumes Jim, "it should go to number one."

"I couldn't even lift a TV," laughs William. "We've never been smash-up-hotel-room-types," agrees Jim. "If I go into a hotel room and the towels aren't properly arranged, I complain."

"When the group's gone, we'll have left behind these wonderful records and they will always be remembered. They might not get into the charts but so what?"
Jim

The Visitors live in 1988

2011-09-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

This live recording features old favourite Never Has Never Will (there's a kinship with McCarthy there, I reckon) and an unreleased song, Lovelorn and Dopey.

I got a fair few demo tapes back in the late 80s. The Visitors one I thought then was the best; Matinee were right to issue their recordings, Nuggets style, in 2000. If you haven't got that collection, Miss, grab your chance.

I asked former Visitors singer Tim Hopkins about this. After expressing relief that this was made after he'd left the band he exclaimed:

Blimes a desk recording! I have half an idea this was made at a show I wasn't at, maybe supporting the Bodines at Exeter Lemon Grove.

The Bats: Other Side Of You live in 1991

2011-09-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Bats on top form, live in Invercargill in 1991, a reminder, among other things, that they've shone brightly for decades and that Paul Kean is as essential to the indiepop bass sound as Chris Hillman:

You'll know that there's a new Bats album, Free All Monsters, out next month and there's a video for that song? It sounds more like At The National Grid than The Guilty Office. On balance, this could be a good thing; TGO has got the greater share of pop classics (if there's ever a post-Compiletely, The Orchard will be one of the key songs), but ATNG is stronger start to finish:

David Woods - On The Green Alone

2011-09-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

Tiger & Woods' recent Through The Green album confirmed them as masters of (new genre alert!) disco-funk-boogie, although as the new songs weren't quite so hot as the old, it was a really a collection of their singles from the past two years with a few add-ons.

David Woods' new ep, On The Green Alone, matches the quality of his Tiger & Woods singles. If you think that two of the best singles of the early 90s are En Vogue's My Lovin'(You're Never Gonna Get It), which forms the basis of On The Green Alone's lead track, License To Drill, and Shanice's I Love Your Smile, and you like your disco sleazy in the NYC early 80s style, then you'll love this.

Electric Empire: Baby Your Lovin

2011-09-06T02:49:00.001-07:00

In Australia last year, a friend was bemoaning the tide of domestic soul and funk. He hadn’t been listening to The Transatlantics, The Bamboos or Kylie Auldist; this year, the case for Australian soul has been made even stronger by the astonishing Cactus Channel debut and, now, Baby Your Lovin by Electric Empire which beautifully recalls that tightly relaxed Hi soul sound and whose distinctive bassline had me reaching for Turn Back The Hands Of Time by Tyrone Davis.

I expect my friend is right in saying that there is a lot of crappy soul in Australia; there’s a lot of crappy music of every genre everywhere. I do know, however, that there’s some brilliant soul coming out of Australia. I bet there’s some I haven’t heard yet. Any recommendations welcome.

And So, Summer (a St Christopher demo)

2011-09-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

(Thee Ultimate) Baby J

2011-08-31T02:47:00.000-07:00

Ghetto Street is a 90-second folk-punk blast with the DIY pop hit of First Base, the teen ambition of fellow Californians Moses Campbell and the ramshackle assurance of the Mountain Goats. Is it available to stream? Is it fuck. Go and buy it.

The other five songs on the Looking For A Sign 7" are stripped down to the bone and set straight from the heart. You want a Moldy Peaches without the goofiness? You got it.

Big Troubles and Mitch Easter

2011-08-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

Mitch Easter is synonymous with the classic college rock sound. You almost certainly own some records he's produced (the early REM albums, for instance). I bet the smart ones among you picked up Boy Genius's second album, Staggering, last year, which Easter produced.

He's the go-to man for any band wanting the power pop sound just right (Velvet Crush, DM3, The Hummingbirds). Big Troubles, this year's most exciting prospect after their Worry album rightly took home all of 2010's lo-fi pop plaudits, have assembled themselves with a fixed line-up and got Easter at the controls.

The Sad Girls/Phantom single makes a strong claim that Big Troubles' second album, Romantic Comedy, will be among the very best credits on Mitch Easter's CV. You can hear that Sad Girls sits comfortably in the Easter/classic college rock/power pop pantheon:

The Pastels and Stereolab zine

2011-08-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

The Pamfletti zine was published in September 93 in conjunction with The Pastels/Stereolab gigs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Here are some highlights:

Stephen Pastel celebrates Edinburgh and Glasgow. His thoughts appear to been informed by the Modern Lovers' Roadrunner:

Laetitia Sadier talks about setting up Duophonic Super 45s:

Bob Stanley goes on a crusade for Euro unity by considering the mastery of Michel Polnareff:

Aggi mourns Paul's Deli, a lesson in under-achievement:

Katrina's Top 10, in perverse order:

Tim Gane recommends records you should definitely buy if you see 'em in a car boot sale or second-hand shop for cheap:

Small Reactions: Nerve Pop

2011-08-22T03:23:00.000-07:00

It was 20 years ago that the dogged fury of Dinosaur Jr (Green Mind), the casually classic rock of Teenage Fanclub (Bandwagonesque) and the incessant hooks of Stereolab (those first two eps) sowed the seeds for Small Reactions. They've made those influences their own and called it Nerve Pop. It's amazing. There's even some Duane Eddy in there. I don't know why. Like everything Small Reactions do, though, it feels right.
Nerve Pop by Small Reactions

The Twerps: Black Eyes

2011-08-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

Melbourne's Twerps attack 60s garage pop through a punk prism similar to The Chills and The Clean in the early 80s and then cling to it for dear life. It's this urgent desperation that makes Black Eyes - and recent sonic adventures like Somebody Else by The Babies and Bright Eyes by The Muslims - essential listening.

This single's on Underwater Peoples; there's another one on Group Tightener, but that hasn't hit the UK import racks yet. Exciting times, I'm sure you'll agree.

TWERPS from Johann Rashid on Vimeo.

Fudge interview

2011-08-17T02:43:00.000-07:00

Following the flurry of interest around Fudge and shouts for a retrospective, I'm happy to reproduce an interview they did with Waterbomb! fanzine (I think this was late 1991) where we learn that a Fudge album would have been called I Wish I Were A Fish.

The Orchids Peel Session

2011-08-13T04:43:00.000-07:00

"The Orchids, operating at the more muscular end of the Sarah Records spectrum and sounding very good too," John Peel, 8 May 1990.

The sound quality isn't brilliant (I used a clock radio tape recorder combination, which isn't the highest of fidelities) and the first song is rudely interrupted by police radio screeching through the urban jungles of south London. And for some reason I didn't record Dirty Clothing, so this is three-quarters of that session.

Still, Frank Desalvo, And When I Wake Up, and Caveman all sound excellent. They really were the best band on Sarah. Let no one tell you any different, especially not that cloth-eared cockfarmer at indiemp3 (hi, Tom!).

EDIT: Dirty Clothing has been provided by the estimable Marianthi, so the session is now complete:

The Honey-B's: What Love Can Do

2011-08-11T03:54:00.000-07:00

Timmion, home of the contemporary soul classic, have burnished their reputation by reissuing The Honey-B's What Love Can Do. Unless you've got a grand to spare and can find an original, Finland's soul heartland is the place to buy this gem.

Saybe Mo, Naybe Mo

2011-08-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

German producer Dexter has the right idea: Mayer Hawthorne's cover of The New Holidays' Maybe So, Maybe No is too straight and needs a bit of work. Sure, it's a crackling vinyl, 80s beats re-work, but it's an improvement on Mayer's take. And you've got to love the "sorry, wrong beat!" sample right at the start that kicks out Mayer and kicks off Dexter's remix:
Saybe Mo, Naybe Mo by Dexter
Out now on a 3-track 7" through Melting Pot.

Pristine Christine demo

2011-08-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

I got a Sea Urchins demo tape in the late summer of 87. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but I'd written to them expressing my devotion to Cling Film and Summershine. They very kindly sent me a tape featuring a demo of Pristine Christine:

The tape had three other songs: Everglades (the version that appeared on the b-side to Pristine Christine), Walking With Happy (later titled You're So Much when released on the Stardust compilation) and a live song called Said (re-named Sullen Eyes when it joined Everglades on the b-side):

Archivists might want to know that Pristine Christine was released on 14 November 1987. This fact is unlikely to help you in a pop quiz.

The Fudge Revival

2011-08-03T01:47:00.000-07:00

No less an authority than Gold-Bears, architects of full-throttled punk-pop 2011-style, are calling for a Fudge retrospective. Their point is well made. Girl Wish is so good a song it was released twice, first on flexi then on proper vinyl:

The Super Fly single gives us the background on Fudge and their previous band, Engine No9, whose one single, Sleep, is a pop classic.

My five pounds says Big Troubles have a copy of Sleep in their collection.

I count 8 Fudge songs over three singles and two Engine No9 songs. Maybe there were some compilation tracks. Whatever, there's a great retrospective to be issued right there.

Black Milk - Brain

2011-07-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Detroit MC Black Milk cut two songs at Jack White's studio in Nashville with a nine-piece band (numbering White) that are out on 7" now. Brain is the funk masterpiece for contemporary clubs that Primal Scream have wanted to record for over 20 years but have got nowhere near achieving.
Black Milk - Brain by weallwantsome1

Belle and Sebastian live in 1997

2011-07-23T05:51:00.000-07:00

Belle and Sebastian were great live in 1996 - their first London headline gig at the Borderline, they seemed excited to be playing, and were messing about (between songs, one of them played Smoke On The Water on a kazoo to much merriment on and off stage). A few days before, supporting Tindersticks at the ICA, Stuart Murdoch spotted Lawrence in the audience and changed a lot of the lyrics to Felt song titles and lyrics.

Come 1997, they were increasingly diffident on stage. This show from August 2 1997 presented a more raggedy band than the year before. They'd played a good gig the previous night in London, but this period marked the start of an unpredictable gigging band (who would keep crowds waiting for an hour before begrudingly coming onstage; who once kept a crowd waiting for an hour and a half before deciding they couldn't play because Isobel had a tickly throat).

The audience was a little lively at this Oxford gig and the heckles came perhaps as much through frustration with the band as with the excess alcohol consumed waiting for the band to play.

Still, if you're prepared to sit through some woman shouting "Judy!" a lot and some bloke shouting what he thought was funny (but wasn't) then some of this gig sounds great.

My main memory is my flatmate not being able to collect the tickets he'd booked on his credit card because the signature had rubbed off from being in his pocket (he refused to use a wallet as for some bizarre reason he didn't trust people who used wallets). We had to pay in cash, leaving us totally broke in the venue. Oxford indiepop legend and millionaire car designer Sir Greg Webster stepped up and loaned my flatmate beer money for the night. That debt is still outstanding. Thanks, Greg.

Slutever

2011-07-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Two self-styled Philly brat punks, like PENS with filthy minds, like Psychedelic Horseshit with an even smaller recording budget and like Daphne & Celeste if they’d grown up on Sonic Youth and Bikini Kill.

They’ve got a song called Seventh Grade which is an anthem to dirty teenage love and starts:
You smell like piss
My heart beat's fast as shit
It starts like this
God, I really hoped for it

They’ve got a four-track 7”, Pretend To Be Nice, that's all killer and is ruled by No Offense:
No Offense by SLUTEVER

They’ve got a digital album Sorry I’m Not Sorry that’s wonderfully scatological, scuzzy and funny, with great song titles (Smells Like Milk and Teen Mom, for instance). You’ll love this band. If you don’t, then they’ll write a song about how much of a shit-for-brains loser you are.

Elizabeth Price's CHOIR

2011-07-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Price - yes, her out of Talulah Gosh and The Carousel to the indiepop types; artiste to the rest of you - has her latest work CHOIR performed at the Chisenhale Gallery in London this Thursday.

The soundtrack was arranged by Price and features original recordings by John Stanley (him out of Tender Trap to you indie types). John says:

I recorded the soundtrack, which has been a lengthy project involving throwing tambourines on the floor in St. Bride's and forcing houseguests to chant 'We Know' into a microphone eighty times or so, amongst much else. It's been really interesting and enjoyable working on such a great piece.

Best of all, it's FREE. The film lasts 15mins, and runs on a loop from 7-10pm.

It says you need to book, but I am pretty sure that this is not necessary and you can just turn up (in the worst case you'll have to wait a few minutes for the next showing).

Puzzle Pieces

2011-07-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

The classic college rock sound - melodic maelstroms like Dinosaur Jr, fast and furious like Husker Du - has been picked up by the Puzzle Pieces label on their first two releases.

Four Eyes' four-track 7", Towards The End Of Cosmic Loneliness, pulls off that rare trick of offering nothing new but sounding completely fresh. If you've been picking up the Outdoor Miners singles or remember The Edsel Auctioneer and The Pale Saints with fondness then this is an essential record.

Bad Banana whip it up even harder and faster on Cry About It - their pop-punk is a kindred spirit to Sourpatch - but can slow it down a touch and be just as effective on the whip-smart Boys With Girlfriends.

Puzzle Pieces are giving these singles away as free downloads, but at only $4 a piece for the vinyl, and with reasonable shipping costs, you should buy them.

Dexys on Jonathan Ross

2011-07-15T03:07:00.000-07:00

As the excitement builds for Dexys' comeback, here are the two new songs they played on Jonathan Ross's Saturday Zoo TV programme on 27 March 1993. These two songs feature Big Jim Patterson and Billy Adams, who sadly aren't part of the current Dexys line-up.

If I Ever

Manhood

I got these songs on a bootleg CD at a record fair in the 90s. This is the full tracklisting:

Todd Shuster (ex-Impossible Years)

2011-07-13T03:51:00.000-07:00

Todd Shuster of The Impossible Years has a CD of twenty songs recorded at home on 4-track cassette between 1988 and 1997. Many of the songs on My Report Card match the quality of The Impossible Years' Dreamworld ep, and all carve out their territory either in paisley psychedelia or urgent beat pop.

There are enough great lost songs to make My Report Card a treasure trove worth the attention of any indiepop or psych fan. One of the jewels is I Agree, which was the first song Shuster wrote for the pre-Impossible Years band, The Jags:

If there are a few occasions over the twenty songs when the influences are a little too obvious (1967 vintage Pink Floyd and The Beatles) then Shuster has enough charm to set out his own Carnaby Street stall convincingly. My Report Card is being sold at a bargain price - email Todd at shustersATcomcast.net to score your deal.

The Go-Betweens live at Tower Records, 25 August 1994

2011-07-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

Robert and Grant played an acoustic set at Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus on Thursday 25 August, 1994. I thought it was one of the best gigs I'd ever seen. My friend from college who I'd persuaded to come along had never heard The Go-Betweens before. He didn't like them. The lyrics were rubbish, he reckoned. He was obsessed with Suede, which is I suppose its own punishment. We are no longer in touch.

The first 45 minutes of the gig

The last five minutes:

Love Cuts

2011-07-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

Love Cuts make DIY pop and have five short, raggedy, gloriously amateur tracks on one 7". Like Real Numbers, they sound like one of the hidden gems on a Messthetics compilation. They've got the fragility of Marine Girls, the awkward stumble of early Pastels, and the raw minimalism of Beat Happening. They're from Vancouver and their names are Cheryl, Kaity, and Tracey.
Lone Wolf by Love Cuts
I Will Kiss Anyone by Love Cuts

Listening to The Impossible Years (not the Art Museums)

2011-06-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

The Art Museums' album last year, Rough Frames, left me cold. It was such a studied interpretation of Dan Treacy's Whaam!/Dreamworld labels that it came off as dead-eyed. I went back to the source material, straight to The Impossible Years' Scenes We'd Like To See ep, the first Dreamworld release in 1985.

Even though the Whaam! and Dreamworld rosters looked to the past for their mod and psych influences, they were no mere revivalists: they tackled their inspirations with passion, not reverence, and breathed new life into their songs.

The Art Museums have a new single out. It's better than anything off Rough Frames, but try as I might I can't shake my initial impressions of them. So here's Philadelphia's The Impossible Years with Her Father Supects, and a whole load of Dreamworld press stuff that I found in my copy. Not sure why it's there as it doesn't relate specifically to The Impossible Years, but archive fans might like these snapshots of mid-80s London indie.

New Estate

2011-06-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

The past couple of years has seen the early 90s US indiepop underground revisited. I'm all for it when bands like Sweet Bulbs and Big Troubles make that messed-up breathtaking noise.

The core influences of that time were kids trying to be My Bloody Valentine, UK indiepop, and the established US indie influence of labels like SST and Homestead.

There are enough bands now to call it a scene. One band too early for this revival were Melbourne's New Esate. Led by Mia Schoen, formerly of Sleepy Township, whose claim for the new band was they'd "washed the wussiness out": too fucking right - New Estate hit the fuzz pedals, turned up the volume and drove huge tunes through the noise.

Don't Like The Way from their debut album, Considering, is still my favourite New Estate track:

(ignore the detail that says this is an untitled demo: that's just how it was sent to me by an Australian friend in 2003)

Sky Hi: Junkyard Dog

2011-06-23T05:15:00.000-07:00

As their name suggests, Tennessee's Sky Hi are influenced by the raw soul of their home state's legendary Hi label; the Sky might allude to the idea that some intoxicants were ingested by this nine-piece band. Or just because it rhymes. Whatever, the Hammond organ gets a funky work out on Junkyard Dog, their quite fine second single, a full year after they rather brilliantly stepped out with Smoothie Pie.
GED007 - "Junkyard Dog" by Sky Hi

The Happy Thoughts

2011-06-19T03:20:00.000-07:00

The Happy Thoughts have chewed up and spat out the bubblegum of their debut single from three years ago as Eric and the Happy Thoughts, toughened up and stripped back their sound to pre-British Invasion rock'n'roll basics.

This delirious (and bloody brilliant) album combines the key elements of Eric LaGrange's other bands: the no-nonsense garage pop of The Cave Weddings and the rama lama rush of Romance Novels.

Buddy Holly - not for nothing did Romance Novels have a single called Peggy Sue - Roy Oribson and The Everly Brothers all spring to mind, only louder, faster and (almost) out of control.

Woods: Sun and Shade

2011-06-16T05:15:00.000-07:00

Woods’ sixth album, Sun and Shade, raises some important points:
• Their best songs yet are on this record
• They probably do drugs too often to hit the mark every time
• Woods sound amazing when they’ve been listening to Jerry Yester, The Association and The Byrds, and less so when they’ve been listening to Neu!, Neil Young and Tom Waits
• Sun is better than Shade (and soft pop beats acid folk)
• The best songs on Sun and Shade would make a flawless mini-album
• If you’re the sort of person who likes music that makes you shout “TUNE!” rather than mumble “tone" then there’s more to love on this record than there is to disregard

Patrice Holloway

2011-06-12T04:09:00.000-07:00

Patrice Holloway's voice as a lead singer and backing vocalist runs through music like a constant heartbeat. Her three singles for Capitol released in 1966-7, Stolen Hours/Lucky My Boy, Ecstasy/Love and Desire, That's All You Got To Do/Stay With Your Own Kind, is one of the greatest runs of 7"s by any artist, ever.

They all flopped. Patrice's lack of solo commercial success - blame Capitol, blame Motown for shelving all her recordings, shrug your shoulders at the record-buying public - only adds to the allure of this long-overdue collection.

Love & Desire: The Patrice Holloway Anthology is worth buying for the sleeve notes alone. The warm plaudits from soul music legends hint at just how highly regarded Patrice was as a singer, writer, business woman and friend. We even learn that she once dated Muhammed Ali and that the royalties from her backing vocals on Joe Cocker's With A Little Help From My Friends poured in when it was used as the theme tune to TV show The Wonder Years.

This excellent collection features ten (10!) unreleased tracks and, after the issue of Brenda Holloway - The Early Years: Rare Recordings 1962-3, mid-60s collaborations of Brenda and Patrice with others as The Belles, Ikettes and Wooden Nickels on various compilations, and the Josie and the Pussycats reissue, all of Patric Holloway's solo and group work has been reissued. Almost.

The Wooden Nickels' Omen single, Take My Love/Should I Give My Love has been mysteriously overlooked. Like all of Patrice Holloway's work, you should have it:

The Hairs: Kool Gawd

2011-06-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

The key influences on the US pop underground in the past 5 years have been the TVPs and The Clean. Over two snappily infectious albums, Knight School took their cue from the TVPs. Now, Knight School’s Kevin Alvir is reading from The Clean’s song sheet, or more specifically David Kilgour’s work, in new band The Hairs.

Flying Nun nuts might hear some Verlaines Juvenilia in The Hairs – not surprising, really, if you remember Knight School did the Verlaines-referencing Death and the Cleaning Maiden – and the typical, uh, juvenilia of Alvir himself on Duh x 12, the kick-off song on 4-track 7” Kool Gawd.

“Hello I need a new start and this is my art,” Alvir sings on Scabies Babies and you gotta hand it to him – this lo-fi, frenetic, fun and fuzzy guitar pop gets The Hairs racing out of the traps.

There are loads more of their (ace)songs on bandcamp.

The Bubble Gum Machine

2011-06-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

Aspirational soul found new levels of charm and pop bliss in The Bubble Gum Machine's I Wanna Be A Man, a call and response between father and son: "Once my daddy aksed me just what did I wanna do/I told him that when I grow up I wanna be just like you". Cute, huh?

This superior kiddie funk is the b-side to I'm The One You Need; there's no date on the label, but you can be sure that both songs were written after the first two Jackson 5 albums.

Now, say it one more time: When I grow up I wanna be a M-A-N

Wake The President: Elaine

2011-06-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

They're back and on glorious form: Elaine sounds like Orange Juice and The Smiths. This marks them out from the crowd. I know that a thousand indiepop bands are meant to sound like Orange Juice and The Smiths, when what they really sound like is ok-ish musicians who like the same films as Morrissey and the same books as Edwyn Collins.

Elaine sounds like The Smiths when Johnny Marr was ripping off all of his guitar lines from the horn melodies of early 70s soul records, and like Orange Juice when they were trying to fuse punk's energy with soul's fervour. This makes them pretty special.

Vein Cranes: Pink Motherfucker

2011-06-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

What kind of sick, juvenile, degenerate fucks would make a record like this? A five-piece from Orlando named after slang for cock who play kick-ass bubblegum garage like the Box Elders, that's who. Pink Motherfucker is fabulously filthy like The Vaselines, and fuzzy and dirty and nasty like Headache City (I'm thinking of Hey Ugly, especially). The only way is up for Vein Cranes, but seeing as they seem stupidly happy lying in the gutter looking up your skirt, I hope they'll stay there and make more throwaway punk anthems.
True Believer 7" by Floridas Dying

Cuffs: Privilege

2011-05-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

Cuffs feature members of Pants Yell! (who I'd got a bit tired of), Big Troubles (who I can never get enough of) and Reports (who I don't know). All you need to know is that their debut 7", Privilege, is a work of splendour, equal parts noise and charm that'll hit the spot for any fan of Half-Life by the Pale Saints, Plumbline by Archers of Loaf and Drive That Fast by Kitchens of Distinction seeking a new pop fix.
Privilege b/w Archer (full band) 7" by CUFFS

Big Troubles: Phantom

2011-05-24T03:03:00.000-07:00

Big Troubles - hands-down, runaway, landslide winners in the most exciting new band of 2010 category - have recorded in an actual studio with an actual drummer. The sound is similar to before - MBV for sure, those first few Ride singles and The Lilys spring to mind - only bigger and crisper.
Phantom by Weathervane Music
A behind-the-scenes video was shot of the band hitting the studio wide-eyed to record Phantom:

Shaking Through - Vol 2 Episode 5: Big Troubles from Weathervane Music on Vimeo.

Girls Are Out To Get You

2011-05-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

Every record by The Fascinations is worth checking out, none more so than Girls Are Out To Get You, storming femme soul straight from the pen of Curtis Mayfield. This 1966 peach has been reissued this week (it grazed the charts – 32 with a bullet – on a previous reissue in 1971) and shows Mayfield’s gift for punchy Detroit-style soul way before The Impressions ever deviated from the Chi-Town sound and got so upbeat.

This is a clear forerunner of The Impressions’ Stay Close To Me from 1968 and is all killer in its own right. Like that? Well, Shirley Walker of The Fascinations cut two singles as Shirley Lawson, one of which, One More Chance, is among the very best of the best:

If you don’t fancy shelling out the £8 just for the Fascinations reissue, a whole CD of Mayfield’s pre-Curtom productions, Curtis Mayfield’s Windy City Winners, is released at the end of the month, so you can get more for your money.

Paisley & Charlie: Stone Lions

2011-05-20T03:17:00.001-07:00

Stone Lions is played in the key of Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, treads in the miserablism of The Dream Academy’s Life In A Northern Town and traces the rain-soaked footsteps of reluctant romantics The Wake.
Paisley & Charlie -Stone Lions by StephenHarvey
There have been loads of bands, mostly Swedish, trying to do this sort of thing in the past 10 years with little success. Most of them have painted themselves into a corner by apparently using only The Field Mice’s anaemic For Keeps as a reference point.

Paisley and Charlie make the grade, though, by spreading their wings: Julia Misbehaves on the b-side is my pick of this single. It’s found a spot somewhere between National Pastime by the Stockholm Monsters and The First Picture Of You by The Lotus Eaters, and marked out its own, very special, territory
Paisley & Charlie-julia misbehaves by StephenHarvey

Jonathan Richman is 60

2011-05-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Jonathan
Happy 60th birthday. There’s no one else like you. I know you moved to NYC at the age of 18 just so you could watch the Velvet Underground every chance you got because they had something you’d never heard before that lit a fuse. We all know that Brian Eno once said “the first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”, but we also know that no one ever formed a band like The Modern Lovers.

Sterling Morrison reminisced about you coming to all the VU gigs and said that “if the Velvet Underground has a protege, it would be Jonathan”. John Cale of the VU produced The Modern Lovers in 1972 and, ok, the baton was handed over then, but you were different to all the other Velvets-influenced bands. Where others hitched a ride on the lysergic mythology, you wrote a song called Hospital about a girl overdosing on drugs and your agonised wait that included the observation “I go to bakeries all day long/There’s a lack of sweetness in my life”.

In your 1992 Velvet Underground eulogy, you sang: “Well you could look at that band/And at first sight/Say that certain rules about modern music/Wouldn't apply tonight”. That’s what the young Jonathan Richman got, the teenager who used to run through Boston parks at night shouting “I’m not a hippy! I’m not stoned”.

With that same spirit you followed the proto-punk of your debut with an album of songs such as Here Come The Martian Martians and Hey There Little Insect. Although four years had elapsed since the John Cale recordings, and there was a very different sound, your freshness (I don’t ever think you’re naive; I always think you’re seeing the world for the first time through the eyes of a child) and your outsider status (again, I don’t think you make ‘outsider art’; I think you make music on the impulses that other people have when they first pick up a guitar but lose as soon as they form a band – “just like kids on a school vacation”, as you once sang) it was still a record only you could have made.

Of course, in between the making of those very different (but similar) albums, you wrote to Creem magazine setting out your musical stall:

I love the doo-wop and girl group pop that informs so much of your music from the mid-70s to the mid-80s (celebration and heartbreak in equal measure – like the Ramones, only much better). Your backing singers were called the Rockin’ Robins after Bobby Day’s 1958 hit; and if I have a favourite JoJo period, then it’s 1980-82 when the Rockin’ Robins – Ellie Marshall and Beth Harrington – were in the band. Yeah, I know you didn’t release any records in this period and I was way too young to have seen you then, but the live recordings are amazing and you, all of people, Jonathan, will allow a guy some romantic notion, right?

I look at your discography from 1976 to 2010 and it’s as close to perfection as ninety-nine is to a hundred. And all the records are so different! There’s a little VU here and there (you never forgot “Twangy sounds of the cheapest types/Sounds as stark as black and white stripes”), Latin American rhythms, Chuck Berry rock’n’roll, straight-up pop, country rock, palm wine music, full band action, solo introspection, even two albums in Spanish.

There’s only one person who could write a country song called Reno about getting a babysitter so you can have a romantic weekend away (you’d never shoot a man to watch him die, natch); no one else who could write a song about a goth (Vampire Girl) with the line “Is she in heaven? Is she in hell? Is she a sex industry professional?” then discover she’s a massive fan of yours; and no one else who could write a love song to Paris (Give Paris One More Chance) and include in a tableau of the city of Piaf and Chevalier the image of “boys singing Bee Gees songs under the skies/And on the steps of the Montmartre they harmonise”.

I look back at some albums and realise that I didn’t always take to them immediately. But then I remember the gently chiding words in That Summer Feeling, “Do you long for her or for the way you were?”, and understand that it’s me that’s at fault for standing still and that your changes were right. For example, I recall that while I didn’t take to Not So Much To Love As To Be Loved for a while after its release in 2004 I now love it.

So while I do hanker for you to make another full-band album, and to see you play in a set up with more musicians than just Tommy Larkins on the drums (it’s been 15 years since I last saw you with a full band), there are other aspects of your live performances that touch me deeply. Like that time in autumn 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, when you walked on to the stage in front of 2,000 people at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, alone. Then, in the dark, you sang Not In My Name a cappella. It brought the house down. I can still to this day feel that atmosphere.

My friends were in a band called The Lucksmiths and they were supporting you that night. I’d just been laid off, so when they suggested, seeing as I was at a loose end, that I travel round with them for the other dates, I happily did so. The next night of the tour in Birmingham we – you and Tommy, The Lucksmiths, me – were sitting backstage. Conversation was awkward and stilted.

Maybe nerves were playing a part. I know that Mark from The Lucksmiths three favourite bands are The Modern Lovers, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, and Jonathan Richman (no particular order – just those three, any way you like). Anyway, I remembered a Q&A you’d done with Rolling Stone a couple of years before. The one point in the article that struck me most was that you were working for free as an apprentice stonemason. I asked you about it.

You got really animated and started talking. Tali, The Lucksmiths singer, had recently done some stonemasonry in Croatia as a charity volunteer, so he chipped in with some of the technical questions. Everything eased back and soon we were all chatting.

The next night in Manchester I pulled some tour posters off the wall and we all got them signed. As I was doing the merch stall that night, I requested that you dedicate the poster to The New Teller. You refused because The New Teller was an actual person and I was definitely not that person. I liked that. A few years later in a house move, I lost the poster. Either that or the girl that I’d broken up with took it – maybe by mistake, you understand. That might explain why I found a Dubstar poster rolled up in my belongings.

She wasn’t a fan of yours. That wasn’t what ended that relationship, but I really should’ve checked that she liked you first before embarking on that affair. There are always people who don’t get you. I sometimes wonder if the Farrelly Brothers, who’ve cast you in their films, most famously There’s Something About Mary, regard you as a goofball in their arsenal of comedy pratfalls, rather than as someone who, in the words of your biographer Tim Mitchell, uses “the absolute candour of his self-expression, often to the cost of risking ridicule...to inspire into his listeners the certainty that what they’re hearing is the truth”.

Likewise, I bet there are thousands of self-styled rock archivists who speak in hushed tones about Bob Dylan but wouldn’t give you a second thought. They must lead grey lives, right? I’m not trying to start a fight with classic rock fans, but hope they can recognise that to prefer JoJo to Dylan isn’t a quirk or a deliberately oppositional stance to the canon; more reasonably, it seems from my point of view the natural state for the pop fan who’s always seeking something fresh, honest and disarming, regardless of orthodoxy.

Those words from Roadrunner, recorded in 1972, ring as true as ever: “Now I’m in love with my own loneliness/It doesn’t bother me to feel so alone/At least I’m not staying home alone/I’m out exploring the modern world”.

Happy birthday, Jonathan. Keep the records and the gigs coming. I and many others like that Vampire Girl (“Who would have predicted? Who woulda suspected? She's not so scary she's got all of my records”) will always be there.
Bye bye,
Ben

Charles Bradley: No Time For Dreaming

2011-05-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Anyone picking up Charles Bradley's singles with the Menahan Street Band these past few years would've expected something special from the No Time For Dreaming album. But this much? This good? Only in our dreams.

Drawing on the raw power of Otis Redding, the high drama of James Brown, the strutting soul of Tyrone Davis and the downhome funk of Bobby Byrd, No Time For Dreaming is - and I don't say this lightly - a classic.

There have been some great albums in 2011 that I'll be listening to for the rest of the year (take a bow Mr President, Sweet Bulbs and Help Stamp Out Loneliness) but there's only one that's got so far under my skin I know for certain that I'll be playing it in ten years' time.

Favourite track? There are many, but I keep coming back to the damning indictment of the American dream that is Why Is It So Hard. Charles Bradley is 61. He saw James Brown at the Apollo in 1962. This is his first album.

The Go-Betweens: Unkind and Unwise demo

2011-05-07T03:25:00.000-07:00

"I try to forget but it's so hard"

After Before Hollywood - an album that was to the post-punk sound what Marquee Moon had been to the punk scene 6 years earlier - The Go-Betweens recorded eight demos for their label, Rough Trade.

Geoff Travis, the RT head who once bragged that he 'can't always tell what will sell, but I've got good ears', declined to option the next Go-Betweens album, Spring Hill Fair, on the basis of those demos. I'll politely disagree with Mr Travis's ears: those demos are great.

(1983)

Did I mention there's a Grant McLennan tribute in London tomorrow?

The Mighty Mocambos feat. Caroline: Ou Tu M'Emmenes

2011-05-04T03:47:00.000-07:00

This sounds like the Jackson 5's I Want You Back souped-up acid jazz style. There's really not much more to it: they've nailed the basics and aimed the horns, beats and guitars at the dancefloor. Resistance is futile.
The Mighty Mocambos feat. Caroline Ou Tu M'Emmenes by mocambo

David Westlake and The Go-Betweens Janice Long session

2011-04-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

A classic radio session from David Westlake backed by The Go-Betweens, featuring The Word Around Town, Dream Come True, Faithful to 3 Lovers and Everlasting.

There's a tribute to Grant McLennan at the Hangover Lounge on May 8 featuring The Mexican Postcards - led by Rob Price of Airport Girl - and the excellent 16 Lovers Lane documentary.

The Mexican Postcards will be playing from around 3pm (exact time tbc).

Mayer Hawthorne and Kings Go Forth join Dennis Coffey

2011-04-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

Funk Brothers guitar legend Dennis Coffey has released two of the best tracks from his new album on a single. Mayer Hawthorne is enlisted for a cover of The Parliaments’ All Your Goodies Are Gone (it’s pretty faithful to the original, but that’s Hawthorne’s shtick; and Coffey did play on The Parliaments’ previous single in 1967, (I Wanna) Testify, so he knows the score).

Kings Go Forth – funk’s finest contemporary band – share writing duties with Coffey on Miss Millie, so you’ve got psychedelic soul, breakbeats, driving Hammond organ, and blaring horns the sweet side of sweaty.

The Motifs and The Zebras return

2011-04-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

The Motifs - purveyors of the world's most perfectly formed small pop songs - are back with Words. Rather predictably, it's brilliant. More, please!

The Zebras set the dials to blissed out guitar pop with wonky psychedelia on Desert Island. Wonderful stuff, again.
KYSOR 7-05 by Knock Yr Socks Off Records
Buy the record from the good people at Knock Your Socks Off.

The Cactus Channel: Pepper Snake

2011-04-24T03:54:00.000-07:00

If there's a global high school battle of the bands competition, then The Cactus Channel are hot favourites. A ten-piece funk outfit from Princes Hill High School in Melbourne, The Cactus Channel have slapped down Pepper Snake, an original blast of nasty horns and raw organ vintage style, on 7". Get it while you can.

The Hit Parade: There's Something About Mary

2011-04-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

In which The Hit Parade dust down their Spanish guitars, set the rhythm to 'driving Motown beat' and revisit the hallowed ground of their worldwide smash Hitomi. Monkees fans will smile at the "Mary, Mary" reference in the harmony; Jonathan Richman fans will acknowledge this single as the second greatest record called There's Something About Mary.

B-side The Boy Who Loves Brighter pays a pagan tribute to the winsome ways of - you're ahead of me here, I suspect - Brighter, by imaginging what Noah's Ark would sound like if played by The Carpenters. A Royal Variety Performance 2011 invitation awaits, surely.
There's Something About Mary by the-hit-parade

The Soul Investigators: Make It Mellow

2011-04-21T06:29:00.001-07:00

The Soul Investigators – currently the world’s greatest soul outfit for their work with Myron & E, Nicole Willis, and with Willie West when some of them moonlight as The High Society – have got a new single, Make It Mellow. Except it’s not really a new song. It’s an instrumental version of Tighten Up by Archie Bell & the Drells. This took up valuable time when they could have been in the recording studio finishing the Myron & E album.

Now quit covering songs and make some new grooves, Soul Investigators! If, reader, you want a song influenced by Tighten Up, head straight to There Goes My Baby by James Knight & the Butlers, which you can get on the excellent Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts of Deep City compilation.

Amida: The Spite House Plot

2011-04-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

Amida have come up with their best songs yet on new ep The Spite House Plot. Fans of The Aislers Set’s snappy pop with deliciously tart lyrics Siddeleys style ("I talked to god and my ex-girlfriend/At least one of them lied") will love Oleander; fans of This Poison!’s furious jangle played at 100mph will find their needs met in Victor Spoils; and anyone missing the bouncing bass lines of Bob should head straight to A Month Of Sundays.
Oleander by Amida
A couple of the songs on this 6-track tape fall short of the quality control that’s guided the cream of this collection, but there are no grounds for complaint given the brilliance of at least three of these songs.
Listen to the whole ep.

Mr President - Number One

2011-04-17T02:22:00.000-07:00

As vintage soul has created the template for some of the most exciting sounds of the past three years, the contemporary take on vintage funk hasn't quite kept pace. Mr President - the nom de funk of French producer Patchworks - has, however, made an early bid for single of the year with the Curtis Mayfield-inspired The Best Is Yet To Come.

Mr President's new album, Number One, is a masterclass in blaxploitation soundtracks (the record opens with Mr President Theme), updates its influences with hip hop (Tribute To RZA) and brings a Latin flavour to the mix (Get It Sometime).

Number One could be to 2011 funk what Kings Go Forth's The Outsiders Are Back was to 2010 - the modern classic.

The Joliettes - Girls Like Me

2011-04-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

The Joliettes debut 45 Girls Like Me has the sass of the Shangri-Las and the pop sensibilities of The Flips delivered straight up with Eux Autres-style garage guitars and infectious backing vocals.

It combines 60s girl group insecurity ("Girls like me will give up themselves for a little smile/Girls like me believe it'll be different this time") with a sharp punky twist that makes you think that maybe they're making a sweetly venomous attack on some other girls. Either way, this is a fantastic record.

Going Gaga Records - home to White Wires and Peach Kelli Pop - have released this in their continuing project showing Canada's essential undergound sounds. If you can bear myspace, head this way for a listen.

Afternoon Naps: Summer Gang

2011-04-12T03:34:00.001-07:00

Summer Gang suggests that Ohio's Afternoon Naps have got one thing in common with Robert Forster's mum: they both think that People Say is the best song Forster's ever written. Summer Gang barrels along on that wild mercury sound, wind in the hair, arms in the sun, all the way to the beach for a surf party with the Fantastic Baggys. And then drops dead from exhaustion.

7" out now on HHBTM

The True Loves: Crack Symphony

2011-04-11T04:16:00.000-07:00

The True Loves, ace backing band to contemporary soul man Eli 'Paperboy' Reed, have stepped out of the shadows to grab the limelight with a pulsating funk instrumental, Crack Symphony, that should be blasting out of car stereos and in municipal parks all summer long.

Play Crack Symphony

Crack Symphony had me reaching for Cause You're Mine by The Vibrations (for the pace) and Jackie Wilson's You Got Me Walking album (for the soulful guitar). It already sounds like a classic. (It was apparently released last summer, but it's just shown up on the new releases list where I buy my records and, well, summer's here and the time is right for this record right now.)

Cheatahs

2011-04-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

Cheatahs blew The Babies off stage at the recent Camp Basement gig. Big crunchy guitars and super-sized melodies to match, they swing between sweet despair and narcotic highs. They had a song that was a dead ringer for Creedence's Bad Moon Rising, which would put them right next to Real Estate, but this London band, led by Canadian Nathan Hewitt, have more in common with the direct noisepop appeal of Dignan Porch and Mazes. I wouldn't be surprised if Hewitt had played The Lemonheads' It's A Shame About Ray a few times, either.

Froshed from a split ep last summer (also featuring kindred spirits Dignan Porch) fuckin' rules.

I Pay A Little Slayer

2011-04-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

From1996-8 the most exciting twists on dance music were coming out of France by way of Kid Loco, Air and Dimitri from Paris. Air went tits up, and I stopped paying much attention to the other two. Dimitri from Paris's new ep, The Nice One Innit, though, is one of 2011's most impressive feats.

I Pay A Little Slayer is the standout track. Anyone looking for an Aretha/Slayer mash-up should look elsewhere; this is a subtle reworking of I Say A Little Prayer that shrinks the big beat blueprint to make a small beat gem. There's no way it's better than the original, but this version is that rare thing: a remix that breathes new life into a classic that you didn't dare hope could be refreshed.

While I struggle with embedding the video or the soundcloud, head here.

There are great interpretations of The Velvelettes' He Was Really Saying Something (Just Sayin' Really) and Prince's I Wanna Be Your Lover (I Wanna Be Your Lobster) which add to the fun.

The remix of Them's garage rock standard Gloria proves what a hundred covers have already told us: there's no magic dust that can make it anything other than a sweaty, laboured work out.

The Reason Why - Robert Forster in 1979

2011-04-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Robert Forster formed a short-lived band at the tail-end of 1979 in London while Grant McLennan was on holiday in Egypt, with two other ex-pat Australians, bassist Robert Wheeler and drummer Geoffrey Titley, called The Reason Why.

Wheeler and Titley had been in The Supports, who had toured northern Queensland that summer (or southern winter, if you like) with The Go-Betweens in a double-decker bus. An amusing account of that eventful tour, which coincided with Peter Milton-Walsh's short tenure in The Go-Betweens and saw Grant being slapped repeatedly by Supports singer Leigh Bradshaw, can be read in chapter 7 of David Nichols' Go-Betweens biography.

The Reason Why recorded two songs one day. These are they:
Untitled
Untitled 2

My best guess is that The Reason Why were named after the opening line of The Byrds' I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better, but the songs explore the post-punk art rock that shaped Send Me A Lullabye, only more Gang Of Four than Talking Heads.

Geoffrey Titley later joined Australian band Tiny Town, who also featured Leigh Bradshaw.