The Twilight Sad: Forget The Night Ahead

Some albums are easy to write about. Nuances leap out at you, hooks are obvious, lyrics are noteworthy, patterns emerge through the music. But none of that has happened for me with the Twilight Sad’s second album Forget The Night Ahead.

After ten listens, I’m still struggling to put my thoughts on the album into words. I think I like it. I think it’s good. But I can’t be sure. It’s so deep, so full of layers that need time and thought to unravel that it’s almost impossible to judge at this stage.

It’s definitely a progression musically from their début, I can tell you that for certain. It’s a bigger record, with more going on, more instruments thrown in (apparently the band used a fire extinguisher on one of the tracks), more sound, more everything. But it doesn’t suffer from it, it’s still subtle, gentle and charming, despite its brash, loud exterior at times.

Many of the tracks don’t seem to go anywhere, and they don’t go anywhere particularly quickly. It’s often a pedestrian ride, but that’s good, it gives you time to think, to analyse, to delve into the album’s depths, to interpret the meanings and feelings behind it.

Accessible windows into the album are few and far between. The Room, a future single, is possibly the best song to judge whether the band are right for you, all building, sweeping, epic soundscapes, with glockenspiel used to great effect. The band have never been shy of deviating from the traditional guitar-bass-drums-vocals combo, and they’re the stronger for it. Other styles and sounds might not appear on the surface, but listen carefully enough, and they reveal themselves over time.

Lyricist and singer James Graham could do with being higher in the mix; his voice is often straining to be heard below doom-laden guitar and you have to listen extra hard to snatch a couple of words of lyric. But it’s deliberately obtuse. Forget The Night Ahead is not a record to dip in and out of, to listen to the odd track on the bus or the Tube, to listen to at parties, or indeed in company. But it’s a great late night listen, the atmospheric darkness of the music drawing you in to the mysterious, thick world of the Twilight Sad.

Fans of Frightened Rabbit will find plenty to love here (the Twilight Sad are effectively their noisier, bolder cousins) but Forget The Night Ahead will also attract fans of My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Hope of the States, Phil Spector and My Latest Novel, whose Laura McFarlane contributes to a couple of tracks here.

7/10

This review was written for TMM.

The Raveonettes - In And Out Of Control

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Raveonettes fell out of vogue. Back in 2003 they heralded a bright new era in rock, riding the crest of the wave brought about by the Strokes, showing that women could once more front successful yet alternative bands. Blondie are the obvious point of reference, but the Raveonettes were always a bit more sleazy and exciting.

But somewhere, undoubtedly, it all went wrong. Mention the name of the band to a teenage scenester and you’re likely to get a blank look in return (although this is generally just what their faces look like, so be wary of reading too much into it). A band who formerly adorned many a bedroom wall in poster form are in danger of slipping by the wayside.

So it’s a good job that their latest record, In And Out Of Control, is cracking, and arguably their best collection of songs so far. There’s not a totally duff track present, and although none of the songs really have the stunning immediacy of some of their early work, it’s a mature, thoughtful and polished record. That might set alarms ringing, as the Raveonettes were always brilliantly raw, with none of the rough edges smoothed out, but it’s very definitely a good thing. You have to move on eventually.

They’ve also moved on from the aping of the Jesus and Mary Chain, trying their hand instead at ear-bleeding My Bloody Valentine-style levels of sheer noise on ‘Break Up Girls!’, which, brilliantly, gave me a massive headache the first time I listened to it. That hasn’t happened since the first time I heard Mika, but this was much better. Unfortunately the effect is somewhat spoiled by the ploddingly pedestrian closing track that follows. It seems the duo haven’t quite got their annoying habit of trying to do ballads out of their heads yet. Note to the Raveonettes: You are not the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. ‘Last Dance’, the other prominent slower song here, flops similarly.

It’s a bitter contrast from the opening of the album, which goes, amazingly, “BANG!”, right in your ear. I don’t recommend listening through headphones as your head might actually explode on impact. More albums should definitely start with the singer shouting in your lughole.

The standout track here is the phenomenally brave ‘Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)’. Based solely around the repeated line of, erm, “Boys who rape should all be destroyed”, some sinister sitary guitar floats over the top, before a stunning piece of harmonics from Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner closes the track. It’s an astonishing song, and you have to admire the balls of the pair for even attempting it.

It really works as an album too. It’s over before you know it, but that’s not to say it isn’t involving and immersive. ‘Suicide’ and ‘D.R.U.G.S.’ are, conversely, highlights, and the sheen of quality persists right the way through the record, making it the band’s most complete work. As you’ve probably gathered, the album is typically dark lyrically, but the contrast with the newly upbeat music works particularly well. Juxtaposition is the in thing for the Raveonettes as they progress towards ten years as a band.

So could a renaissance for the band be on the cards? On the basis of this, there’s no reason at all why not.

This review was written for Muso's Guide.

The Twilight Sad: Forget The Night Ahead

Some albums are easy to write about. Nuances leap out at you, hooks are obvious, lyrics are noteworthy, patterns emerge through the music. But none of that has happened for me with the Twilight Sad’s second album Forget The Night Ahead.

After ten listens, I’m still struggling to put my thoughts on the album into words. I think I like it. I think it’s good. But I can’t be sure. It’s so deep, so full of layers that need time and thought to unravel that it’s almost impossible to judge at this stage.

It’s definitely a progression musically from their début, I can tell you that for certain. It’s a bigger record, with more going on, more instruments thrown in (apparently the band used a fire extinguisher on one of the tracks), more sound, more everything. But it doesn’t suffer from it, it’s still subtle, gentle and charming, despite its brash, loud exterior at times.

Many of the tracks don’t seem to go anywhere, and they don’t go anywhere particularly quickly. It’s often a pedestrian ride, but that’s good, it gives you time to think, to analyse, to delve into the album’s depths, to interpret the meanings and feelings behind it.

Accessible windows into the album are few and far between. The Room, a future single, is possibly the best song to judge whether the band are right for you, all building, sweeping, epic soundscapes, with glockenspiel used to great effect. The band have never been shy of deviating from the traditional guitar-bass-drums-vocals combo, and they’re the stronger for it. Other styles and sounds might not appear on the surface, but listen carefully enough, and they reveal themselves over time.

Lyricist and singer James Graham could do with being higher in the mix; his voice is often straining to be heard below doom-laden guitar and you have to listen extra hard to snatch a couple of words of lyric. But it’s deliberately obtuse. Forget The Night Ahead is not a record to dip in and out of, to listen to the odd track on the bus or the Tube, to listen to at parties, or indeed in company. But it’s a great late night listen, the atmospheric darkness of the music drawing you in to the mysterious, thick world of the Twilight Sad.

Fans of Frightened Rabbit will find plenty to love here (the Twilight Sad are effectively their noisier, bolder cousins) but Forget The Night Ahead will also attract fans of My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Hope of the States, Phil Spector and My Latest Novel, whose Laura McFarlane contributes to a couple of tracks here.

7/10

This review was written for TMM.

Sergeant: Sergeant

So then, the third album from Dundee’s premier pop scamps the View. It’s a typically upbeat, jangly record with nothing to make it stand out from the crowd… hang on, what’s this? It’s not the View? We better start again…

OK, so this is actually Sergeant, a four-piece from Fife. They’ve been on my radar for a couple of years – I think I even saw them at Leeds festival back in 2007 – but their sound has been polished so much it’s nigh-on unrecognisable from their early ramshackle and lovable noise.

It doesn’t help that Nick Mercer’s unremarkable vocals are almost an exact copy of the View’s Kyle Falconer, and the music is a pale, toothless imitation of the Dundee band’s debut record Hats Off To The Buskers.

The best track present is the album’s last, It All Comes Back To Me. Harmonies make a rare appearance, and it lifts the track above the landfill indie it accompanies for the rest of the record. Jo Whiley probably loves this band, and that should be enough to put you off.

It’s not a bad record. It’s easy to nod your head along to it, and the songs are short and sweet enough to hold your attention. But once the record is finished, the hooks leak out of your brain as quickly as sand through your hands, and all you’re left with is an empty feeling. There’s nothing as interesting in Sergeant as other bands of their ilk either. They’re just a wee bit dull, and it’s hard to recover when you’re first album is boring. What a shame…

4

This review was written for TMM.

Cult With No Name - Careful What You Wish For

A few listens in to this second offering from London duo Erik Stein and Jon Boux, a.k.a. Cult With No Name, I’m still struggling to find anything interesting about the album to tell you.

It’s mostly a male voice singing and a piano playing. The two parts are by two different blokes, with Stein singing (sometimes sounding like Robbie Williams, and on the poppier moments more like the Pet Shop Boys) and Boux prodding away listlessly at the piano, with some moodily atmospheric swirly stuff going on in the background on some of the tracks and, even more rarely, some electronica stabbings that sound like the basic settings on a Casio keyboard for toddlers. And not in a good way.

There’s nothing to lift it beyond the mundane. Stein’s lyrics are mostly trite platitudes, the melodies samey, and the swirls of sound uninteresting. It’s not awful, it’s just dull. It is possible to tap your foot along, even to concentrate on it for a few seconds at a time before boredom inevitably sets in, but it’s too amateurish to be taken seriously, and not pleasant enough to be simply background music.

Cult With No Name have bedroom project stamped all over them. Two friends with big ideas, but without the talent to realise them. Careful What You Wish For is full of half-baked premises, pieces of sound that with the right backing might work, but that fall flat in this setting.

A smattering of violin in ‘Something Better Than I Know’ and a bit of guitar in ‘She B.C.’ can’t lift the monotony in the middle of the album, and by the horrible cover of the Stranglers’ ‘Golden Brown’, any smidgen of interest has leaked away.

It’s not possible to pick highlights or even lowlights from this effort, as none of the tracks are distinguishable from each other. It’s just a big slushy mish-mash of unformed sound, and it’s really not at all worth an hour of your life. Expect something by the Cult With No Name to adorn a car advert sometime soon. It’s that kind of banality.

This review was written for Muso's Guide.

Girls: Album

There’s something charmingly honest about Californian duo Girls that disarms most possible criticisms. The pair freely admit being on pills for most of the recording process of the record (tellingly, the band’s website, listed on their MySpace page, points straight to a drugs website. The band do not have their own website). They are happy to tell stories about their chequered past, both in interviews and in their songs, and they evidently wear their broken hearts on their sleeves. It’s often painful listening to their lovelorn tales.

Life has been eventful for Christopher Owens (writes and plays the songs) and Chet White (does whizzy production stuff). Owens was born into and brought up in a cult – a real one, none of this pretendy, take a few drugs and lark about ones – and only escaped, to Texas, when he was 16. There, he rebelled. It took being rescued by a millionaire philanthropist – yes, really - to save Owens from an almost certain drugs-related death. Moving to San Francisco calmed him down, but a nasty break-up knocked him back and gave him lots of songwriting material. Many of the tracks on Girls’ cleverly titled début, Album (take that, search engines!), tell the tales of this split. After that, he met White, a fellow slacker, and the pair started making music together. The rest, as they, say, is history.

Girls are a schizophrenic band. One moment they’re crooning modern Beach Boys lullabies (Lust For Life) and the next they’re creating epic yet somehow sparse soundscapes of ice cool next-to-nothingness (stand out track Hellhole Ratrace).

Opening track Lust For Life is a contender for single of the year, Owens playing with the idea of homosexuality in the opening line: “Oh, I wish I had a boyfriend / I wish I had a loving man in my life”. The juxtaposition of the jaunty guitar lines and Owens’ upbeat vocals with the oh-so-sad lyrics combine magnificently, and the song rushes past before it’s barely started, “ba ba ba” backing vocals transporting you to an LA beach. In truth, it could do with another verse-chorus repeat at the end to pad it out, but as it is, its two and a half minutes of angst-filled joy stick in the mind for most of the rest of the record.

“I know I’ve made mistakes / but I’m asking you to give me a break,” pleads Owens on next track Laura, one of a handful of songs on Album that could represent musical love letters to his former lover. And the heartbreak just keeps on coming. Weirdly, it makes you feel better about your own lost and unrequited loves, as they can’t possibly have been as brutal as the one that inspired this record. Or maybe Owens’ soul is just too open. It’s an honour to be allowed a peek inside his heart.

Jangly guitars lie over most tracks, adding to the Beach Boys comparison, but it’s really the humanity contained in these twelve songs that make the similarity between the two bands clear. Although I’m pretty sure the Beach Boys never wrote a song with a title as provocative and sweary as Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker.

They’re capable of going all shoegazey and JAMCish when the mood takes them though. Epic centrepiece Hellhole Ratrace takes the efforts of Glasvegas and the Big Pink to create a similar sound and makes them look really rather silly, such is the quality of Girls’ songwriting.

If you like the faux-bohemianism of MGMT, you’ll love this even more. It all adds up to one of the year’s most immersive début albums.

This review was written for TMM.

Charlotte Hatherley: New Worlds

It’s pretty fair to say that Charlotte Hatherley has achieved a lot. Having bolstered Ash’s line-up to a foursome while she was still at school, she stayed with them for almost nine years until leaving at the start of 2006 to pursue other projects. At the time it was thought it was Hatherley’s decision to leave, but since the ‘amicable’ split, it has been revealed that the three original members had asked her to leave. The true reason behind the split is still shrouded in mystery.

On the basis of this, Hatherley’s third album, it could be that Tim Wheeler and co. were simply scared of her upstaging them. New Worlds is a record that has a very definite sheen of quality all over it. Gone all the rough edges of her début Grey Will Fade, and the sound is a huge leap forward from the lo-fi and somewhat dreary and unformed follow-up The Deep Blue. Playing live with Bat For Lashes has certainly helped Hatherley develop her own sound; New Worlds is the album of a woman sure of herself and ready to move forward in her career. Plus, playing with someone with such obvious pretentions to Kate Bush’s throne has helped Hatherley distance herself from the comparisons between herself and Bush.

Hatherley is surprisingly still just 30 – she seems to have been around forever – but instead of having a major panic and an early midlife crisis (as I plan to when I hit the big 3-0), she’s created one of the finest British alt-pop records of the year. It’s bright, shiny and bold, with Hatherley’s often throaty vocals clearly having been worked on by the guitarist. Now her voice is sweet and sugary, but still with enough variation to be punch when it’s needed, as on first single White, and possible next single Full Circle, which contains one of the dirtiest, fuzziest basslines of the year so far.

The instrument of choice for most of the album is, of course, still the guitar, with Hatherley not stepping out of her comfort zone too much. iTunes refuses to give the album a genre, labelling it ‘unclassifiable’ but in reality the record is unashamedly poppy. Hatherley remembers her way around a gigantic hook well from her days with Ash, although she uses them sparingly rather than drowning the often subtle music in them. It’s good to see her stick to her guns instead of going down the obvious electro route popularised by Pixie La Boots, or whoever is in vogue this week.

Hatherley has for the first time found her quality control button as well. The album doesn’t sag in the middle, due to an excellent running order that fills the the mid-section of the record with short sharp tracks that pass well before their welcome is outstayed. Only towards the end of the ten tracks does attention wander, but in today’s now now now gimme gimme gimme generation, that in itself is a triumph. And the sudden end to closing track Wrong Notes leaves you wanting more.

New Worlds is an exciting step for one of Britain’s brightest talents. Up next for Hatherley: cracking the mainstream.

This review was written for TMM.

Sam Isaac - Bears

Sam Isaac has obviously been listening to Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. The similarities between Sam Duckworth and namesake Isaac are almost endless. They both have a desperate, yearning quality to their voice, and rely on jaunty, bouncy melodies to help them get their points across. But whereas Duckworth’s clumsy political mantras led to him calling his debut Confessions of a Bohemian Teenager, Isaac could have easily called his debut Confessions of a Comfortably Well-off and Actually Quite Uninteresting Yoof With Not That Much To Say.

There’s nothing offensively bad about Bears, it’s just that there’s nothing exciting or original present in it. Parts are lifted straight from Duckworth’s material, from Snow Patrol, from Frank Turner, and from pretty much any emo-ish male singer-songwriter you can think of.

It’s an album to listen to on a Sunday afternoon, lazing around in bed with your partner (who, like you, doesn’t like music all that much, but will listen to it because it’s the done thing, yah?) reading the papers. Probably the Telegraph.

It’s gentle and melodic and contains bits you can sing along to and bits you can nod your head along with and bits you could even have a bit of a boogie to. But it is undoubtedly a record you’re unlikely to recommend to friends (not cool ones anyway) and liking Sam Isaac is never going to be something to shout from the rooftops.

But it’s pleasant enough. Music like this never hurt anybody, never did anything to offend anyone, but it just doesn’t inspire, it doesn’t excite, it doesn’t make you think, “Wow, I want to be like him”, which all good music should. Annoyingly, the best track present (‘Fire, Fire’) opens up with a direct rip off of Snow Patrol’s ‘You’re All I Have’, which ruins it from the very beginning, even if it is ever so slightly catchier than the other tracks on the album.

And it’s samey. I’d like to hear Isaac give something different a bash, have a go at a big rocky track, or a slow, mournful ballad, rather than just aiming straight down the middle of the road, which, incidentally, is a really quite dull road with no twists or turns or accidents or low-flying aeroplanes on it, in fact, with nothing on it to distinguish it from millions of other roads out there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve genuinely enjoyed Bears the few listens I’ve given to it. But I can’t imagine any time in the future where I think to myself, “Ooh, yeah, I really fancy listening to Sam Isaac”. It’s just going to be too easy to wipe him from my mind. He’s so forgettable I can’t picture his face five minutes after looking him up, and his music isn’t memorable enough to make a lasting impact.

This review was written for Muso's Guide.

David Gray: Draw The Line

David Gray was previously known as classic Radio 2 fodder, a harmless singer-songwriter with vaguely catchy melodies and a nice line in occasionally memorable lyrical couplets. He is of course best known for a song about a sci-fi series, and enjoyed his best period of success a good few years ago. He is now in his 40s and wears only beige clothes.

But what’s this? Draw The Line is David Gray 2.0 – all grooving psychedelic funk and acid house jam sessions, Radiohead-like repeated drum loops and yelped vocals, creating a feeling of utter ecstasy as he pushes the boundaries of music to the extreme, with one of the finest records ever made.

Did I have you going for a while there? Surprise surprise, it sounds the same as every David Gray record. Sweeping strings complement carefully plucked guitar and plodding piano and Gray’s monotonous, tuneless, meaningless warbling. It’s such a lack of progression I was halfway through his previous album before I even realised Draw The Line had finished.

If you listen to this by choice, you should have your ears taken away. You don’t deserve them.

This review was written for TMM.

Arctic Monkeys: Humbug

Arctic Monkeys are living proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover, to mix a metaphor. Four skinny white blokes from Yorkshire, with one of the worst band names in recent memory, the Sheffield group could have easily turned out to be another Milburn (remember them? Thought not). Putting a scruffy, stubbly geezer smoking a fag on their debut album cover only served to back up any stereotypical thoughts about the foursome.

Question marks were then raised when Favourite Worst Nightmare, their follow-up to the hugely successful Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not, struggled to live up to its groundbreaking predecessor.

However, looking back, Favourite Worst Nightmare was just a stepping stone to something much bigger, and much better. For the second time in four years, critics will be falling over themselves to declare Arctic Monkeys to be the defining British band of the decade. And I’m not about to buck that particular trend.

With hindsight, the turning point for the band was when founder member Andy Nicholson grew tired of the touring schedule and the fame that came with being an Arctic Monkey before leaving the band. The band took the opportunity to replace Nicholson with a meatier and darker bass player in the shape of Nick O’Malley, and Humbug is the sound of that decision coming to fruition where on Favourite Worst Nightmare the pieces of the jigsaw were still being taken out of the box and checked, never mind being slotted together.

As usual, the more memorable songs come in the form of ballads, strange for a group quickly enforcing their reputation as Britain’s greatest current rock band. Cornerstone is the latest from the Monkeys’ production line of memorable modern love songs, telling the tale of singer and main lyricist Alex Turner’s attempts to rid himself of his obsessional mooching over an ex-girlfriend by trying to get off with similar looking ladies. He also continues his fine form of getting brilliant words into choruses with the sublime ‘elongated’. And the closing couple of lines: “she said I’m really not supposed to but yes / you can call me anything you want” are genuinely heart-rending.

Secret Door is, for the first few listens at least, superior to Cornerstone, but while Cornerstone’s appeal grows as you read and interpret the lyrics, Secret Door’s fades. Lyrically, Humbug is by far AM’s most obtuse offering yet. Many of the tracks are so wordy they are unsingalongable (yep, I just made that up), which may disappoint fans used to the terrace anthems of the first two albums. But realistically, Turner had to move away from the ‘lads-on-the-piss’ theme of his earlier musings, and besides which, musically is where Humbug really excels, despite Turner’s excellent spelling lesson on Dangerous Animals.

Much has been made of the involvement of a certain Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age, as the Monkeys strived for the rock sound that had so far eluded them. But rather than Homme taking over some of the knob-twiddling duties from Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford, the change in sound is due to the the fact that they’ve taken some time to think about what exactly they wanted to do next. Favourite Worst Nightmare was solid enough to set them up to take a brave step and Humbug is it. Even Crying Lightning, the lead single, does not shout out “HUGE HIT” – indeed its failure to break the top ten probably came as a relief to the band – but as a collection of songs, Humbug fits together far slicker than its predecessors.

It’s terrifically paced, bringing up the heat when it’s needed, and calming it down at just the right moments too. And by God does it grow on you. Humbug won’t reward you for sporadic listens, it won’t be helpful to dip in and out of, and listening on shuffle will just confuse and baffle. But Humbug takes Arctic Monkeys into the kind of territory their peers have struggled to cross into.

Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs have all stuttered with their third albums, but Humbug contains none of the doubt or hesitancy of those bands’ recent work. Arctic Monkeys are too sure of themselves, too confident of their talents, and just too damn good to make the same mistakes.

Humbug may not be an obvious choice when the end of year top ten lists come up, but it does confirm Arctic Monkeys as by far the leading British band of their time.

This review was written for TMM.

The Cribs: Ignore The Ignorant

What do you do when your indieness is in danger of affecting your ability to cross over successfully into the mainstream? What do you do when your famously rough sound is in need of a polish up? What do you do when you’re running out of ideas for the guitar-bass-drums combo?

Well, if you’re the Cribs, you sign up Johnny Marr. Reams of words have been written about the former Smiths guitarist joining the band, with the consensus seeming to be that he must be suffering a midlife-crisis to want to join the Wakefield punksters, and that his presence has stunted the band’s DIY ethics.

The band are of course not averse to bringing in surprising fresh blood – Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand produced their last record, Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever – but the inclusion of Marr as a full-time member has raised eyebrows across the world of indie.

But if you look past the obvious and peer deep into the depths of Ignore The Ignorant, you find that it’s a change that is for the most part, a very good thing for all parties.

Despite their dominance in their field, the band’s sound was growing tired, and they were due taking a risk. Marr’s presence has a steadying effect on them, with crashing punk-rock evolving into melodic indie tunage throughout the record.

Lead single Cheat On Me is probably the best indication of the new direction, a gigantic chorus, backed by chirpy, sharp guitar from Marr. Marr’s lines and ideas stand out all too clearly, with Ryan’s guitar simply keeping time, rather than providing the angled riffs of the first three albums. The development gives the singer the chance to actually sing, and it comes as a surprise how melodic his voice is when he puts his mind to it. We’ve grown used to Ryan’s vocals being delivered in yelps or screams or shouts or screeches, whereas on Ignore The Ignorant, we hear him caress his words out much more carefully.

It’s not all great though. The album fades terribly; with a handful of dire, dull ballads clouding what was previously shaping up to be one of the best British records of the year. Fortunately, the sheer brilliance of the first half of the album more than makes up for its later failures. We Were Aborted rhymes “masturbation” with “fellation” (amazing), City Of Bugs goes all epic and Dovesish (amazing) and Hari Kari is the band at their best (yep, amazing).

The danger was that this new found maturity would dim the band’s vitality, that decamping to LA to record the album with Nick Launey would render them impotent and unimportant. But in moving away from the bedroom project, lo-fi sound, the brothers have carved themselves out a new opening, a new position in the higher echelons of modern British rock music. At the peak of their powers, the Cribs are exactly the type of band that inspire kids to pick up guitars and form their own bands. And if the youngsters learn from the Cribs’ liberal, punk stylings too, then all the better.

Ignore The Ignorant opens doors for the Cribs. No longer will they be pigeonholed as part-timers, relying on tabloid exploits such as Ryan’s back injury at the NME Awards, to garner media attention. It might not be a record that will be fondly remembered for years to come compared to its predecessors, but it will be thought of as the first in a long line of albums made by the Cribs/Marr partnership, a pairing that looks like becoming ever more fruitful as the foursome grow together as a band.

This review was written for TMM.

The Big Pink: A Brief History of Love

There are some bands whose brilliance strikes you straight away and you love them for the rest of your days. Other band you write off and they grow on you slowly, becoming one of your favourites over many years. Others you think are astonishing, ground-breaking, magnificent, but fade from your consciousness within a matter of weeks.

The Big Pink are in danger of falling into the latter camp.

That’s not to say that their brash, beautiful, bold debut is not good. It is. Very good. But it’s just not as amazing as it might seem at first.

History is littered with bands that have been hyped to the rafters by the music press before being ignominiously chewed up and spat out. The Big Pink are the latest for the increasingly desperate NME to hang their hat on, handing them the Philip Hall Radar award – previously won by the Long Blondes, Franz Ferdinand and the Twang, to give some indication of the success and quality of the bands that have won it – back in February.

So already the pressure is on London duo Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell. But they pull it off for the most part. A Brief History Of Love is a woozy and understated yet classy debut, full of heartfelt melodies and thoughtful repeated beats. Unfortunately, too much of the time the record veers dangerously into background music, needing the thumping brilliance of next single Dominos to wake it up, or the charmingly soft and vivacious Velvet – by far and away the two best songs on the album, and two of the best of the year full stop – to remind us what the pair are capable of.

Arguably the most representative track on the record is the driving rhythms of At War With The Sun, which drifts off into nothingness despite the climactic, alarming guitars at the end.

It clocks in at little over three quarters of an hour, normally ideal album length, but for some reason it feels long. Although Furze and Cordell are clearly full of big, bright and often brilliant ideas, it seems their limitations are exposed in the second half of the album. There’s only so much you can do with some fuzzy guitars, an electronic drum machine and someone who can kind of sing but not really.

There’s plenty to love here though, with lovelorn teens especially likely to be drawn in by the band’s loner-ish vibe. Opening track Crystal Visions is a stunning statement of the band’s intentions, Frisk is dark, mysterious and complexly layered, and the title track is weirdly uplifting despite its bleakness.

A Brief History Of Love is good enough for the band’s future to be worth keeping an eye on, but you do wonder how the duo can progress without branching out with new instruments and fresh impetus.

This review was written for TMM.

Beep Beep - Enchanted Islands album review

American record label Saddle Creek is best known for being the hunting ground of Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, aka The New Bob Dylan. Oberst is renowned for making albums as albums that is, not a random collection of songs throw hotch-potch together in the hope that it sticks but as an actual album in the purest form, something you would sit down and listen to instead of dipping in and out of on Spotify as is the way these days.

However, fellow Saddle Creekers Beep Beep have done exactly the opposite for their second effort, Enchanted Islands. Each song sounds like it is made by a totally different; there is no stylistic cohesion. There are no discernible trends, patterns or sounds. The vocals swing wildly from Elliott Smith/Jeff Buckley crooning to Hot Hot Heat style yelping. The guitars sound like they need tuning throughout, and not in a Seasick Steve, that’s the whole point kind of way. It’s a mess.

But that doesn’t mean it is total rubbish. ‘Wooden Nickels’ is a passable ballad, with the two voices, one light and one dark, contrasting nicely, and ‘Baby Shoes’ is an enjoyable lullaby for the weirdo generation. But it is mostly rubbish.

Unfortunately, they are rare bright sports in a sea of beige. Beep Beep are just trying to be too kooky, too out there, too damn weird to be taken seriously.

The PR bumf on the record label website describes Enchanted Islands as a “journey illuminated by the clash of willful escapism with the looming inevitability of “adult” choices”. Well, if it’s a journey, it’s certainly one I want to escape from, and I’m making the adult choice to never listen to this album ever again.


This review was written for Muso's Guide.

The XX: The XX album review

Little is known about London foursome the XX. They are (deliberately, at a guess) difficult to search for online, and they don’t seem to have given many interviews. But I have discovered that the brains behind the project, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jamie Smith, shares my name. So that’s a good start. We have something in common already.

I can tell you, however, that they’ve made the finest British debut album of the year, a hugely accomplished collection of songs that puts them right at the forefront of what constitutes boundary-pushing.

The eponymous release is simply staggering; with most of the songs jaw-droppingly good. I’m not exaggerating. It’s simply superb. Let me try and explain why.

They’re basically the anti-Horrors, which is probably why I love them so much. Whereas the Southend scenesters lavished pointless layers of noise all over average garage-rock tunes for their bafflingly critically-acclaimed sophomore album Primary Colours, the XX are the sparsest, most publicity-shy band I’ve heard all year.

Two instruments are usually more than enough, with the sumptuous vocals of girl-boy pair Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim dominating proceedings on top of swirly, whirly soundscapes that make you wonder how the band aren’t Icelandic. It’s frost-bitingly cool. My ears are tingling writing this as I listen.

The standout track and centrepiece of the album is Shelter, a stunningly basic track that slowly builds up to epic levels, without blundering around with multiple guitar lines or overblown hooks. Croft almost strays into aping Metric’s Emily Haines on the vocals but she retains enough of her own charm to avoid being a complete rip-off. Croft’s vocals also sound a little similar to the breathy Sarah Nixey of Black Box Recorder.

Basic Space has had fans foaming at the mouth with its Vampire Weekend-ish African clave rhythm but in reality it doesn’t properly reflect the magnificence of this band. There are more than enough ideas in the XX to last most bands a lifetime. They could do literally anything after this. The world is theirs for the taking.

If we still gave ratings for albums, this would be a ten, easily. It’s really that good. It’s so exciting, I need to go for a lie down. Wow.

This review was written for The Music Magazine.

Bombay Bicycle Club album review

The debut album from London youngsters Bombay Bicycle Club has been a long time coming. Formerly pigeonholed in the same box as fellow indie upstarts Cajun Dance Party they have held back on releasing their first record until this summer, a full two years after their first EP release.

And it was a wise decision. I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose is a stunningly mature album, bursting with life and vitality and other such clichés always rolled out about bands that are young in years.

It’s genuinely difficult to pick highlights out. In the iPod generation of just picking out singles to listen to it works superbly as an album without appearing to have any outstanding tracks.

Always Like This manages to be both chirpy and dark, The Hill is probably their most accessible track, jauntily riffing along, Evening/Morning is Interpol-esque (i.e. brilliant) and Magnet starts off sounding like Song 2, winds up sounding like a million other Blur songs, but still manages not to sound like a complete rip-off.

Jack Steadman’s vocals won’t be to everyone’s tastes, coming across a bit too Brian Molko at times, but it works well enough with the music to be overlooked.

BBC appear to have slipped under the radar somewhat after their initial promise. But you’d be a fool to let them fade away into the indie ether. They’re just too good to suffer that kind of fate.

This review was originally written for The Music Magazine.

La Roux album review

I really wanted to dislike this album. I had dismissed Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid (yep, I had to look up his name, but that seems to be the way they both prefer it) as try-hard bandwagon-jumpers, riding the wave of 80s inspired pop indiscriminately to the top of the charts, making mugs of the general public.

But there’s a surprising amount of depth present in their debut, aside from the three giant singles Quicksand, In For The Kill and Bulletproof (admittedly the three catchiest and most memorable tracks on the album).

But the standout song is the slow-burning As If By Magic, where Jackson sings in a couple of keys lower than the ear-bleeding usual. The layered vocals in the chorus are easily the best bit of the record, and it’s a shame the track dies out so quietly.

It’s not all good though. Fascination is about 1/1000^th as good as the track of the same name by Alphabeat, Tigerlily’s spoken male vocal is horribly misjudged, and the closing two tracks are simply dull.

But all in all there’s enough here to suggest Jackson and Langmaid may be a pair worth keeping an eye on. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Caribbean steel drums on the next single I’m Not Your Toy goes down with record-buyers.

This review was originally published on The Music Magazine.

Glasvegas album review

Glasvegas – Glasvegas (Columbia – 8^th Sep) 9/10

Occasionally, believe it or not, the NME gets it right. It might not be often, but for every Bravery, there’s a band as special as Glasvegas championed by the once-great magazine. Call it the law of averages.

And this time they were spectacularly on the money. Glasvegas have unleashed a beast of a debut, destined to slay Best Of album lists across the country come the end of the year. Yes, they sound a bit like The Jesus and Mary Chain crossed with My Bloody Valentine, but harking back twenty years does not change how good this album is.

The heart of their appeal is emotion. Critics lambast their simple style, but their often basic drum lines and guitar riffs are not at all the point. The thing that makes Glasvegas stand out is the way they make you feel.

It’s a rare thing to hear an album that makes your spine tingle almost all the way through it, but the black-clad foursome has managed it with ease. And you sense there’s even more to come.

‘Glasvegas’, self-titled as all debuts should be, begins with ‘Flowers and Football Tops’, daringly extended to seven minutes for this recording, but losing none of its grace and power. It tells the story of murdered Glaswegian teen Kriss Donald and is a worthy brother to ‘Daddy’s Gone’. Which we’ll come to later. The refrain of ‘You Are My Sunshine’, set to the band’s trademark Phil Spector Wall of Sound guitars, is almost too much to bear.

Social worker anthem ‘Geraldine’ follows before the band’s best song, ‘It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry’. Incredibly personal, singer James Allan lays his heart on his sleeve and performs a vocal of such magnitude it gives even Morrissey a lesson in self-abuse. “I feel so guilty about the things I said to my mum when I was ten years old”, he confesses, almost chillingly.

The band’s decision to decamp to New York with Muse producer Rich Costey had left many fans worried that the band’s lo-fi sound would become punctured by ludicrous solos and stupid glitter jackets. But Costey, aided by Allan, keeps it understated throughout, letting the band’s natural potency shine through without layers of clunky production.

The chorus of “Here we fucking go” on debut single ‘Go Square Go’ relates a childhood playground fight. Violence, divorce, stabbings and murder all punctuate the record. It might not appeal to Middle Englanders in the Cotswolds, but for many in so-called Blade Britain, many of the lyrics will hit hard.

So, to the band’s defining track, ‘Daddy’s Gone’, detailing a messy divorce from the child’s perspective. “Be as fucking insincere as you like” barks Allan venomously, amid for once toned down guitars and a gentle ‘tish’ from stood up drummer Caroline McKay. It’s hard to say anything about the song that hasn’t already been said a million times, but Allan’s repeating of the line “He’s gone” is a real hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck-standing-up moment, among a sea of similar sentiment.

‘Stabbed’, entirely spoken, over the piano of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ treads the fine line of mawkish and melancholic dangerously, and as a result is probably the weakest track on the album. But still, you have to admire the bravery of the band’s inclusion of it.

The album closes with two gentler tracks, winding down successful after the passion of the previous eight numbers. The change of pace is entirely necessary and brings the record to a natural conclusion.

Most debuts have the odd clunker, but this one is solid gold throughout. I don’t often use the word masterpiece when describing an album but this truly is one. It brims with courage and a fuck you attitude, it fills you with joy and sadness at the same time, it makes you want to punch the air while jerking at the heartstrings. It is simply stunning.

With today’s daily news bulletins about the latest knife crime, Glasvegas’ tales of life on Glasgow’s hardest streets feel even more powerful yet delicate than ever. This album will define the year for sure, and perhaps even the decade. Yep, it’s that good. Honest. For once, believe the hype.

[This review was originally published on The Music Magazine]

The Killers album review

The Killers – Day and Age (24 Nov – Mercury) 7/10

I’m probably not the best person to review this album. To me, everything about the eighties was rotten. Thatcher, flares, Michael Jackson, new wave, Chernobyl, John Lennon was shot dead, Thatcher, disco, Trivial Pursuit (I’m awful at it), MTV, Thatcher, Madonna, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Ian Curtis killed himself, and, er, Thatcher.

So it surprised me when the eighties revival gathered pace this year, and, shock horror, wasn’t totally shit. Mystery Jets went all normal and synth-tinged, and created an excellent album in 21. MGMT, though not a band I rate, captured the hearts of NME-readers across the globe by wearing silly trousers and recycling music from twenty-odd years ago. We Are Scientists went all eighties-inspired too, not that anyone noticed.

After a couple of listens of Day and Age it becomes clear what decade the Killers have been listening to music from. Indeed, Joy Ride is basically Madonna’s Like a Prayer with different words, but it doesn’t stop it from being toe-tappingly addictive.

Human, despite the atrocity that is the lyric ‘Are we human or are we dancer’ is still one of their finest dancefloor-slaying creations, despite the mega-hits that were Mr Brightside, All These Things and When We Were Young. Spaceman is likely to be another massive hit.

Although Sawdust was a collection of b-sides and rarities rather than a proper album, Day and Age feels much more like a follow-up to that collection than Sam’s Town, their last studio album. The mid-section of the album could have slotted straight into Sawdust, which, you would think would represent a lack of a move forward, but is actually the most sensible decision the Las Vegas Mormons could have made.

See, while Hot Fuss was way too sickly pop to take seriously, and Sam’s Town far too influenced by Springsteen to properly enjoy, Day and Age feels like the work of a band that (cliché alert) finally feel comfortable in their own skin.

A throbbing baseline gives in to a calypso feel on album standout I Can’t Stay, which oddly enough, sounds like it would be more at home in the fields of Avalon at Glastonbury than the uber chart-botherers from their first two albums did when they headlined the festival last year.

It’s still very derivative, but the influences are now buried at least slightly below the surface for the most part. And try as you may to hate them, the melodies that the Killers write will wriggle under your skin, lay eggs, and refuse to shift.

It may not be a classic, but it’s another step in the right direction on their path to U2-style hugeness.

[This review was originally published on The Music Magazine]