Audio Journal : 20/09/2010

Two albums that I was particularly looking forward to were released last week. The first was Grinderman's Grinderman 2. Grinderman is a four-piece band comprising Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Grinderman is designed to be an alternative to the band members' day jobs in Nick Cave's main band The Bad Seeds, and also allows Cave and Ellis a departure from their relatively high brow soundtrack work.

Grinderman, for those familiar with Cave's work with his earliest band The Boys Next Door / The Birthday Party and, from 1984, The Bad Seeds, is intended to be more raw, less refined, less planned. Cave describes it himself as more 'fun'. I got into Nick Cave in 1993 when I saw him perform the seminal 'Red Right Hand' on Jools Holland; I'd been aware of him already through the NME's continual praise, but also because he was (and still is) signed to my favourite label, Mute. Up to that point I'd only heard a unrepresentative B-side on the Mute compilation International, and hearing 'Red Right Hand' encouraged me into his back catalogue. My good friend Neill and I saw The Bad Seeds live at Brixton in 2004 and it cemented my belief that Cave is indeed one of the best performers in the business. More reviews of The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party etc can be found over at my Documentary Evidence site; the full review of Grinderman 2 can also be found there too. If you can't be bothered to read that, it would appeal to anyone with half an interest in loud, rough rock with a fuzzy edge.

The other album was Interpol, by Interpol. Yeah, yeah, how many times have I mentioned that band here? The recording of their fourth album saw the departure of bassist Carlos Dengler, a key member of the group and throwing doubt on whether this was the end of the line for the band. Recruiting ex-Slint bassist Dave Pajo for live duties, the band appeared to have shrugged off any scepticism and refocussed.

Interpol is probably the band's most polished album yet. There's still the melancholy edge but there are brighter spots too, marking a progression of sorts. Some of the best tracks are the ones that start quietly and build toward epic crescendos – 'Lights' and 'Always Malaise' are the two critical cases in point, both consisting of layered elements which coalesce during the course of the song. Drummer Sam Fogarino makes his kit sound like a drum machine set to 'Krautrock motorik' setting and the piano sprinkles that crept into singer Paul Banks' solo album (as Julian Plenti) are liberally applied across the album. The brilliant single 'Barricades' is about as upbeat as this band is going to get, while other tracks court a punky ska vibe. I love it, but you'd have probably guessed as much.

Vinyl corner



A business trip to Luxembourg City and a degree of free time meant I found my way to CD Buttek Beim Palais, a treasure trove of vinyl and CDs spread haphazardly across a scattergun array of genres. I bought a second-hand 7" of Pete Shelley's 'Homosapien II'.

A late-night conversation a few weeks ago with Steve, a colleague, reminded me of this track. I only had a Simple Minds version of this (remixed by Erasure's Vince Clarke), and that conversation reminded me I should try and track the original down.

Well, this isn't actually the original. 'Homosapien' was released in 1981 from the album of the same name by the Buzzcocks frontman. The BBC banned it for the same reason that Frankie was silenced a couple of years later (thus ensuring the single cult and popular success). This 1989 re-recorded second version is credited to Pete Shelley and Power, Wonder And Love and recasts the electronic original as a floor-filling dance track with decent techno sounds. It doesn't knit together terribly well on first listen, and initially I thought it was a Stock, Aitken and Waterman record (the fact that the initials of the collaborators forms PWL didn't help). The B-side, an instrumental version, is better and would have dropped neatly into DJ sets, though it is definitely of its time.

Then again, it's hard to get too disappointed when you've only spent €0.50.

Audio Journal : 11/09/2010

Going to see Muse was always going to be a rather unusual experience because I'm neither a fan nor terribly well-acquainted with more than one album in their back catalogue. That said, we spent an evening at home watching their Glastonbury performance with barely concealed awe at its sonic precision and theatrical stage spectacle, and found ourselves tracking down the last God-awful seats available for one of two dates at Wembley Stadium.

Since we booked those tickets, my enthusiasm has waned and despite my principal stipulation was that we must make a concerted effort to gen up on their back catalogue, we wound up there only really knowing 2006's Black Holes And Revelations which we bought when it was released; a good album, granted, but one I've only really listened to a few times and which never got added back into my iPod after I lost all my songs.

My interest was piqued, however, when I saw White Rabbits on the line-up. White Rabbits are a band hailing from Brooklyn whose 'Percussion Gun' single from last year featured a dense barrage of burundi drumming and some of the most impassioned vocals I've ever heard. The intensity of their performance was nothing short of thrilling. And the crowd seemed pretty appreciative too – not bad for the first band on the bill.

White Rabbits were followed by The Big Pink, whose first song sounded like the groove from 'Supermassive Black Hole', only like it had got stuck. I'd describe The Big Pink as a potentially interesting Muse-lite electronically-infused doom-prog. The singer looked like Ralph, the teddy-boy rocker from Dear John. There was absolute no justification for the dreary a capella cover version of 'These Arms Of Mine' by Otis Redding, which made you realise what sort of Johnny Borrell-sized ego their singer must have. 'Dominoes' was probably the highlight. 'Ohhhh,' said the woman behind. 'So, that's who they are.'

I can't bring myself to write about Lily Allen, I just can't. I don't have anything bad to say about her, and I also don't think there was anything wrong with her performance (apart from a weird junglist breakdown), but I just don't think she really fit the bill.

As for Muse; well, after watching the Glastonbury footage, they were everything we thought they'd be. The performance was ludicrously, ridiculously and fabulously over the top. During one song they ejaculated streamers over the crowd; they rode out into the crowd on a revolving, ascending stage to perform 'Undisclosed Desires'; during an encore a giant UFO was floated out above the crowd and a Cirque De Soleil-esque acrobat burst from the bottom to perform acrobatics while hanging from the bottom of the spaceship. That sort of thing. You get the picture. Totally Spinal Tap.

Add to the enormous stage set and unabashed pomposity a performance that was delivered with the band's trademarked flawlessness, and I think I began to understand just why Muse are regarded as such a vital stadium act, and also why our side of the stadium seemed to be dominated by hordes of loyal European fans who obviously schlepp around the globe watching them. For three unassuming guys from Devon (Matt Bellamy's silver suit aside), their stage presence and enormous progtastic sound way exceeds their relatively diminutive stature.

Having an appreciation of their wider catalogue would have stopped me feeling like a fraud – I normally hate those people at concerts who only know the hits – but my highlights were probably 'Starlight' and the glam-prog 'Personal Jesus'-meets-'Doctorin' The Tardis' strains of 'Uprising'.

Audio Journal : 06/09/2010

Over the past year or so, I've focussed this blog on things I like. Now it's the turn of the things I don't; specifically, albums that I've decided to delete from my iPod.

The first is Hot Fuss by The Killers. I bought this album to scratch an itch, and itch duly scratched I realised I didn't like it very much and that quite honestly I preferred the itch. Growing up listening to Eighties synth-pop and hearing some of that electro / New Romantic sound evoked in the singles taken from Hot Fuss made The Killers appealing as a concept, and I listened to the album repeatedly when I bought it. Then I just went off it; Sam's Town killed turned me off them completely and now it's time to say farewell to Hot Fuss. CD sold on eBay and deleted from my iPod.

After my wife played me 'Slow Hands' I fell for New York's Interpol in a major way around the time of their second album, Antics. In New York in 2005 I caught up with their back catalogue and bought Turn On The Bright Lights from Other Music in the Lower East Side. However, I was frustrated by the paucity of their back catalogue. And then along came Editors, rising from the somewhat less glamorous Midlands, with The Back Room, which seemed almost to be a carbon copy of Interpol. I loved it. And then Interpol released Our Love To Admire and suddenly I had no need of Editors. Plus since then they've become altogether Killers-esque in their leanings. See above. CD sold on eBay, deleted songs from my iPod.

We all liked Keane when their début Hopes And Fears came out didn't we? The album was released at a time when introspective, emotional music was in focus – Snow Patrol, Elbow etc – and for a while Keane were leading the dour pack. And to think they didn't even have guitars. I had a couple of their songs pegged for inclusion on my hypothetical soundtrack to the film adaptation of the book I haven't finished writing yet, but finding the album again and giving it a listen I've decided they're just boring. Deleted.

Bloc Party's A Weekend In The City was a major disappointment for me. I liked Silent Alarm, their 2005 debut, and I figured I'd like the follow-up. The sleeve – with its slightly eerie shots of the Westway – is weirdly moving; opener 'Song For Clay (Disappear Here)' is named after Clay, the main protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis's seminal Less Than Zero, with the parenthesised section being a phrase that has appeared in every one of Easton Ellis's novels. Sadly, given Less Than Zero's air of casual detachment from the events unfolding around Clay and the sonic possibilities that could be created using that reference point, the Bloc Party track is hugely disappointing. As is the rest of the album. The closest the band get to that vibe of chilly aloofness is on the thinly-veiled 'On'. Sold / deleted.

Vinyl corner



I used to buy a lot of records from charity shops. Back in the days of my first website / blog (Red Elvis Central), most weeks I would just write about 7" singles I'd bought that week in Colchester's many charity stores.

Occasionally I'll still go into such shops and look for things, but it's without the enthusiasm of my early twenties. I'll flick through vinyl absentmindedly, smile at 7" singles I own and ruminate on how it's generally Eighties pop tracks that you find there these days. Back in the mid-Nineties it was Eighties stuff that I'd buy, feeling excited when I chanced upon a Human League or Tears For Fears record, if only because they were unusual in amongst the vast swathes of dumped Jim Reeves records. Now I can't be bothered.

However, a couple of weeks back I found a copy of Owen Paul's 'My Favourite Waste Of Time' from 1986, a song I saw performed on children's TV at the time and have had buzzing round my head at various points ever since. With maturity I began to think of the song as a bit of a guilty pleasures and that's exactly how I felt when I finally bought it for 25p a few weeks back.

I haven't heard 'My Favourite Waste Of Time' since it was released, and I'm impressed that I had even remembered how it went after 24 years, but that wasn't the most surprising thing - the surprise was the fact that I may have remembered this as a cheesy pop track, but it's actually a reasonably mature example of proper pop, in the same way that Nik Kershaw or Talk Talk transcended chart-bothering naffness. Sure it's anthemic, soulful, joyous, whatever, but it's not naff at all. It has a pleasant acoustic guitar running throughout the track, and true to this point in the Eighties, it has a sax solo; I wonder whatever happened to sax solos.

B-side 'Just Another Day' is a delicate, laid-back mixture of skipping percussion, Michael Karoli-esque Krautrock* guitar atmospheres tucked away in the distance and a heartfelt vocal.

According to his Wikipedia entry, Owen Paul McGee to give him his full name, 'is now back on the road as the lead vocalist for Ex-Simple Minds', a fact that I only mention because he was never a member of Simple Minds.

* Ian - you might be disappointed to know that Krautrock comes up as 'geriatric' on my BlackBerry spellcheck.

Audio Journal : 30/08/2010

With the summer all but over, this is the third and final of my summer albums, and I promised it would be divisive.

Perhaps that was overstating it. This is just an album from my favourite band, Erasure, my fandom of said band having garnered much derision over the years. You know the sort - 'Oh, you like them? Really? Them?' or 'So you like Erasure... Are you gay?' That sort of rubbish. I've said it before, here and elsewhere, and I'll say it again. Erasure – the duo of singer Andy Bell and ex-Yazoo, ex-Depeche Mode electronic music guru Vince Clarke – are, and always will be, my favourite band. And for the record, I'm not.

The Innocents occupies a special place in my musical collection, as it was the first Erasure album I heard. I'd seen them on Going Live, loved the massive hit 'Sometimes', but was just at the cusp of starting to spend my pocket money on music; until Erasure my record buying was scattergun at best (Fat Boys? Really?). After hearing The Innocents I said with absolute conviction that they were my favourite band. When they released the follow-up, Wild!, I began collecting their back catalogue, first tentatively and then obsessively. By the time of the last single from Chorus in 1992 I owned every single and all but one limited edition release.

I'm not sure that would have happened if it wasn't for my dad coming home from work one day brandishing a tape of The Innocents a colleague had made for him. I seem to recall it was just prior to our annual Whitsun trip to Southend, and I spent the majority of that holiday on the beach listening to this on my Walkman over and over, while wearing cheap sunglasses (so I could stare at older girls in bikinis; I was 11. The most remarkable part of that is that the weather was actually good enough in May for girls to even weak bikinis). Hence why I always associate it with the warmer months.

Considering their repute as a pop band, it's not a particularly upbeat album. Songs like 'Chains Of Love', 'Weight Of The World', the Motown-esque 'Heart Of Stone' and my personal favourite 'Phantom Bride' are optimistic on the face of it but are laced with a sense of defeat, sadness and world-weariness. Only the gospel sounds of 'Yahoo!' could conceivably count as 'upbeat'. Sometime Pet Shop Boys producer Stephen Hague produced the album, which explains why the album has a less prominent electronic angle, more of an organic feel.

The album spawned three much-loved singles, the aforementioned 'Chains Of Love', plus 'Ship Of Fools' and 'A Little Respect'. The latter's defiant stance in the face of adversity was covered, improbably, by Wheatus as a teen-rock anthem.

Read more about The Innocents at my Documentary Evidence site.

Audio Journal : 23/08/2010

So, I love Twitter. Probably a little too much, but as a music fan I think it's an incredible source of music I frankly haven't got the time to source out for myself.

Tweets from the likes of Gap My Mind and Morning After Pills (two New York-based blogs obsessed with disseminating new music) offering free mp3s have swelled my collection of miscellaneous tracks to new levels; tweets from rcrdlbl consist of multiple daily free mp3s and are always a good source of interesting new bands, plus the odd track from established bands / artists. The point is that I could just go to these sites and search endlessly; time-stretched as we all are, the regular tweets from these three sites prompt me to download things I just wouldn't get around to it, which would leave this blog to focus on my usual fall-back subjects – Interpol, Rufus Wainwright, Sonic Youth / Thurston Moore, David Byrne etc.

Ubuweb is another; their collection of Fluxus, modern / post-modern composition and Downtown experimentation keeps my intellectually inquisitive music radar sated. Daily tweets from them range from random Warhol quotes to links to 20CD compilations of early electronica.

Then there's the more interesting aspect, to me, which is bands / musicians / artists who just start following your tweets as a result of something you post - people using Twitter tend to search out people who post things that they're also interested in; you recipocate; everyone's peripheral network of followers is thus mutually swelled. This first happened early in my Twitter experience, late last year. I don't know what it was, but something I posted must have attracted the attention of the band SixtyFiveMiles, I got into a dialogue with the person responsible for updating their Twitter status, I listened to their MySpace tracks, then downloaded their debut album, Finnish Tango, which I reviewed here; further, because of the relatively easy access Twitter affords to musicians themselves, I secured a brief interview with Simon from the band, which I also posted on this blog.

The most recent occasion has been similarly rewarding. A New York musician, Ignacio Uriarte, began following my tweets and we struck up a dialogue centred around music (me saying how much I liked bands from NYC; him saying how much good music was coming out of the UK).

The five tracks he emailed me are what I would describe as anthemic alternative guitar pop. I found myself humming the strident, uplifting harmonies of 'Thugs And Thieves (You Can Have It All)' for days after the mail arrived; the urgent Brit Pop-meets-Eighties New Wave 'What It Takes', with its Beatles-y middle eight, is similarly instantly catchy, but the effect doesn't wear after a while as it does with some songs in the genre.

My personal favourite was 'Miles Away', sounding like it could have sat comfortably on The Virgins' debut album from last year; starting with some very Cars-esque spindly guitar, the subject matter – separation, mostly metaphorical – is hardly optimistic but the effect is to create a glossy, quality pop.

I only hope someone signs this talented songwriter and takes his songs to a wider audience. Meantime, navigate your browser to the links below and enjoy the songs for yourself.

Ignacio artist page

Audio Journal : 16/08/2010

Source: MySpace / (c) Ali Tollervey

It is an increasing trend that when I go to gigs, it's the support that are often way more interesting than the band you've actually paid to see. For example, all three support acts at the recent Kings Of Leon Hyde Park stadium-histrionic extravaganza knocked socks off the Followills.

So too did Dark Horses, opening for Kasabian at Brixton Academy. A warm-up show for an upcoming V Festival slot, it is always a big thing to see a band that have become stadium monsters in a comparatively small venue. Despite the energy of the crowd, it failed to move me. Much. Well, unless you count making me move not just to the back of the standing area but all the way to back of the balcony upstairs. Yeah, I know, I'm a wuss. I'm really too old for that crushing and pushing.

Moronic crowd aside, the set failed to impress me. As bands become larger, the opportunity to surprise diminishes, unless you count a Bonham-lite vignette drum solo (replete with a gong) from the band's Leo Sayer-lookalike sticksman; or the way one of the songs suddenly tacked on Giorgio Moroder's arpeggiating bassline and Serge began singing 'I Feel Love' (it's the laziest trick in the book when a song has a 4/4 rhythm; yawn). Consequently the set was literally no different to when we saw them at Wembley last winter – nothing wrong with that per se, but I just think seeing them do it once (venue aside) was probably enough. The best track was the motorik B-side 'Julie And The Moth-Man' (here strangely mixed up with lyrics from Salt 'n Pepa's 'Push It'), just like it was last time.

Dark Horses were excellent. They arrived on-stage to a tape of one of the Hell's Angel security guards from Altamont bemoaning the crowd touching his precious Harley, while an insistent drone burned harshly underneath. After a couple of tracks I began to detect some healthy Jesus And Mary Chain references in the fuzzy, distorted vibe (I'd like to believe this translates to their studio recordings, but I suspect it won't). I couldn't fathom what the caped female lead was singing, but that also adds to the JAMC allure. Tom from Kasabian joined her for part of one song, singing some laddish 'ooh-ooh' sounds, and dancing like King Louie. She returned the favour later with Kasabian. The cape I could have done without; a bit too Florence Welch for me, but it did have the name of the band on the back, which helped in that part of the set where they haven't introduced themselves and you're wondering who they are. It also broke up the shades and leather of the five guys behind her.

Most songs were tense, edgy affairs. There was one that harnessed the throbbing muted groove of the Reid brothers doing their best Velvets / Modern Lovers thing; they played electric mandolin; a guy looking like Sid Vicious played percussion – tambourine on some tracks, while on others he smashed a drum with a (Mary) chain. (The latter point reminded me of a gig in Colchester in 1997 where Navigator and Stars Of The Lid supported Labradford; a guy in Navigator repeatedly thrashed a chain across the stage). Synth, deep bass resonance and fuzzy guitars all made Dark Horses a compelling proposition.

Dark Horses @ MySpace

Download 'Rose' / 'Rose Unconcious'

Audio Journal : 02/08/2010

A while back I said I'd do a series of 'summer albums', the first being New Order's Technique. The début Fleet Foxes album is the second, and probably the most recent album I'd put into the hypothetical 'summer albums' playlist.

Fleet Foxes is a captivating slice of lo-fi, folksy Americana. So lo-fi in fact that there are apparently all sorts of off-timings across the record, indicating an eschewing of ProTools perfection in favour of genuine warmth and realism. (In fairness, it would take a producer, engineer or professional musician to notice this; being none of these, I'll just take Q's word for it.)

The album is brief, and sometimes when I listen to it I tune out of the individual tracks completely, just absorbing the pastoral warmth of the delicate, ethereal atmospheres it generates. Clearly then, it's not an album that I'd consider listening to when driving; but it is, I find, the ideal soundtrack to chilled-out summer Sunday family breakfasts with the kids (regrettably the only day of the week we're altogether to have breakfast), the gentle sounds from the music adequately matching the slight hangover haze from the Saturday night before whilst having a simultaneously calming influence over two ordinarily wilful children.

If I were forced to pick favourite tracks here, it would probably be as follows: 'White Winter Hymnal', whose name doesn't sound at all summery (though its verses do conclude with the words 'summer time') but which includes some beautiful, delicate and uplifting vocal harmonies; 'He Doesn't Know Why', whose emotional rises and falls are just as riveting after repeated listens, progressing, seemingly chorus-less, to a final section of almost Phil Spector-esque grandeur; finally, 'Your Protector', which has similar characteristics to the two songs above, with a strident, elegiac tone, as well as an hint of Celtic mysticism.

I find it hard to separate this album from M Night Shyamalan's The Village, since I watched that movie at around the same time as we bought this. But more than anything it just perfectly suits the slightly erratic summers we are cursed with in this country.

As for the third, and final, 'summer album' in the playlist, expect it to be divisive; then again, this is supposed to be a relatively personal blog...