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At the weekend we watched Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, a teen romance flick based around two indie kids' love of music. Set in Manhattan / Brooklyn, the film tells the tale of one solitary night in the city – imagine Scorsese's seminal After Hours without the mystery – and Nick's quest to get over the heartbreak from his on-off relationship with a girl (Tris; that's right, Tris), for whom the hapless lovestruck romantic would produce mix CDs. These CDs were routinely binned by the girl, falling inconceivably into the hands of Norah, who, after watching Nick's band The Jerk Offs (himself on bass, his two gay mates on vocals and guitar and a child's drum machine) performing at a club somewhere Downtown, falls in love with him. The plot then follows their on-off attempts to get together while the back story sees them trying to track down the appallingly-named (and hopefully imaginary) cult band Where's Fluffy who are performing a guerrilla gig somewhere in the city.
Okay, so far, so teen flick. Aside from shots on NYC's trendier locations, the key differentiator is the knowing musical backdrop, from the offbeat 8-bit electronic score supplied by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh (imagine his work for Rugrats, but all grown up), to the soundtrack which features stalwarts of the US current alternative scene like Band Of Horses, We Are Scientists and Vampire Weekend (who turn in the exclusive track 'Ottoman'). Devendra Banhart, making a brief cameo in one scene of the film, delivers a typically oddball funk-folk-unclassifiable song in 'Lover' and the rest on the soundtrack are mostly from bands I've never heard of.
Where the film became fairly cloying with its continual namedropping and attempts to look musically cool (doesn't that just grate? I mean, who would do that?), the soundtrack album is eminently listenable, with lots of interesting and introspective ear-friendly songs perfectly evoking the subtle, heart aching mood of the movie. It has a Richard Hawley track, for example. That said, my favourite track overall is still the urgent dirge-y NYC punk of The Jerk Off's 'Screw The Man' (sentiment of the lyrics most definitely to one side); so what if they're a prefab, made-up-for-this-film band and this is a pisstake, it's a great track which reminds me of The Runaways 'Cherry Bomb' mixed with The Gun Club's 'Sex Beat', two classics from the CBGB era.
Those Brave Airmen are a four-piece band from Stratford-upon-Avon consisting of Dave Johnson (vocals, rhythm guitar), Neil Edden (bass), Gavin Skinner (drums) and Mark Rehling (guitars) who released their debut single on iTunes last week. Entitled 'Pure Evil', the track has an unmistakeable grungey atmosphere and raw production edge, Johnson delivering the lyrics in a style which Eddie Vedder would be proud of and a grinding middle eight interplay between guitar and bass which could last a whole lot longer and never become tiring.
'I guess our influences are far ranging although the 90's grunge sound is definitely one we've all grown up with and enjoy,' Edden told me by email. 'It's not really a conscious decision, it's just the way that we sound together on that song.' Other Those Brave Airmen tracks cover different territories - slower, faster, harder, softer. Describing their eclectic live sound, Edden says 'I like to think that seeing us is a bit of a mixed bag – almost like seeing a covers band, but with originals – there's something in there for everyone.' What's not to like?
Download 'Pure Evil' from iTunes here.
I’m currently listening to Narcisstika by Toykult, a band I’ve never heard of before. They briefly started following my tweets this week, so I thought I’d check them out. Reverbnation have been giving their new album away and I thought ‘What the hell? It’s free’. Described as ‘rock electronica’, it reminds me of bands I used to listen to like Cubanate or Parallax who melded heavy guitars with electronics to fantastically bleak effect. Electronic sounds have come a long way since those two bands adventurously deployed them, the effect of Narcisstika being a sequence of edgy, jarring beats, twisted sounds and warped vocals all melded together in a rapidfire blur, as best illustrated by my favourite, ‘Automatic Addict’. Get a copy here.
Gang Of Four are listed as one of Toykult’s influences, and coincidentally I bought their classic Entertainment! album this week. Gang Of Four, along with bands like Wire, The Pop Group, Mekons and others, epitomised the post-punk sound which has had a strong bearing on modern bands like Franz Ferdinand. True UK punk really only lasted a couple of years (it’s a shame no-one bothered to tell Sham 69), rapidly fragmenting into a sound that incorporated other influences. In Gang Of Four’s case that influence was a combination of arty knowing and funk – their lyrics read like a dystopian Nietzschean self-help book while their basslines wobble around like a punk-weaned George Clinton.
The Rumble Strips, whose debut album Girls And Weather failed to live up to expectation and just reinforced the narrow-minded view that they were Dexy’s clones, have returned with a confident new album, Welcome To The Walk Alone. The album is glossily rendered by producer du jour Mark Ronson with plenty of strings and less emphasis on the horn section that made the Dexy’s comparisons so easy. The effect is something I can only describe as how Elvis Costello might have sounded if Phil Spector had ever produced an album for him. For all the strong new material, my favourite song is ‘London’ which I first heard at an NME gig in Northampton a couple of years ago.
I should give a quick plug to Those Brave Airmen, a four-piece band formed by some of my old school friends. Their MySpace page includes four of their songs, which are anthemic heavy guitar tracks with a grungey vibe. My wife, who is something of an expert on such things, says they remind her of a band she used to like called Live.
Finally, I’ve been listening to So Damn Happy, a live album by Loudon Wainwright III which effortlessly blends together emotional, folksy numbers with more humorous tracks. ‘Heaven’ has the audience in stitches, detailing as it does a debauched vision of the afterlife while ‘Primrose Hill’ movingly recounts the depressing story of a homeless London busker. I don’t know how Wainwright can so easily blend together such apparently conflicting themes, but he does and it’s brilliant.
