There’s something else
September 3rd, 2011
I can’t remember if I wrote about them at the time but I first came across Airship when they supported Frightened Rabbit last year. While they didn’t blow the Scottish boys off stage, they were certainly impressive. In fact, they were probably the best support act I’ve seen in a while. So good that I sought out their debut EP and while it was quite a bit slicker than their live show, it certainly hinted at good things to come. Since then, they kind of fell off my radar and if I’m honest, I’d pretty much forgotten about them. Until now.
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Know that it won’t go
August 28th, 2011
Seeing as I’ve mentioned them in the last two posts, I reckon I ought to at least say a few more words about Male Bonding and their new album ‘Endless Now‘. Especially as it’s been on fairly high rotation since I got it. So here we go. Clocking in at just 36 minutes, ‘Endless Now’ is a zippy blast of fuzzy, scuzzy rock that’s owes as much to the early 90s alt rock sound as it does to the punks of the late 70s. Yet while their page on Sub-Pop’s site describes them as noise rock, I think that’s some way off the truth. To me, that suggests an impenetrable racket where in truth, beneath the buzzsaw guitar and lo-fi production, there are some great melodies and pop hooks at play. Not to mention the fact that the vocals have a dreamlike shoe-gaze haze to them which just makes the whole thing far more palatable than anything you could describe as noise rock.
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Light to dark can shift in an instant
August 7th, 2011
It occurred to me the other day that I hadn’t written anything about Bright Eyes‘ 2011 release, ‘The People’s Key‘. Don’t worry, that wasn’t a comment on the record’s quality. It’s more of an oversight on my part as it has been a record that I’ve found myself coming back to pretty regularly. In fact it’s probably the best thing Conor Oberst has been involved with since the double whammy of ‘Digital Ash in a Digital Urn‘ and ‘I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning‘. As much as I enjoyed ‘Cassadaga‘, it felt a bit too serious, mature and dare I say it, countrified. His solo efforts meanwhile, were okay but nothing more. They lacked anything that really stood out. Conor seemed to have calmed down and I think I always prefer him when he’s on the verge of spittting the lyrics out with that petulant anger of his earlier work. There seemed to be too much slide guitar and not enough frustrated rage. As for Monsters Of Folk, well, despite several attempts I don’t think I ever got much further than half way through that record. I think it’s fair to say that, like a bad meal, it just didn’t agree with me. So for me, ‘The People’s Key’ signals some kind of return to what I want from Bright Eyes.
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You offer no reason
July 22nd, 2011
In the last post I mentioned that I’d been listening a lot to She Keeps Bees so I thought I’d write a little bit more about them. Now while I’d not heard of them before, it turns out they’ve been around for a few years and indeed, ‘Dig On‘ is their third album. Obviously not having heard them before I can’t really say how this album fits with their back catalogue but taken on it’s own merits, it’s a great but minimal blues rock album. Due to the boy-girl duo dynamic of the band and their basic drum-guitar sound, it would be easy to draw comparisons with bands like The White Stripes and The Kills. However while there are similarities, those weren’t the first bands I thought of. As I said last time, early Cat Power springs to mind with a little bit of Sleater Kinney thrown in for good measure.
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Who said I would not understand?
July 10th, 2011
I started off not thinking very much about The Vaccines‘ debut album. I don’t know if it was a reaction to the tremendous hype that surrounded it’s release but I gave it one listen and pretty much consigned it to the pile marked unremarkable. The strange thing is though that it’s managed to worm it’s way into a pretty heavy rotation. What initially seemed like a pleasant but unremarkable bunch of short indie songs has managed to creep up on me and sound like a damn fine bunch of short indie songs. I mean sure, if you’re looking for the saviours of rock and roll, chances are you’re going to be disappointed. There’s nothing particularly new or innovative at work here. Yet this set of songs are far superior to the landfill lad rock that passes for modern British indie music.
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