Twenty Shattered Songs
Twenty Songs, 8th October 2006
It was an interesting Twenty this week but a good one, definitely. More than usual we kept track of the songs we were listening to throughout the week and that gives us a bit more variety than we usually get in the twenty, with songs from the past year rather than just the past week cropping up. Plus a couple we've been waiting for for ages..
Kicking off with Buffseeds and Who Stole The Weekend, which is as old as it gets for us. Apparently Buffseeds are now IKO but it's a similar path they tread. Have you ever read one of our write ups for a song we don't like where we say "this is probably someone somewhere's favourite song", Buffseeds write those sort of songs for us. Simple, not massively adventurous but just delightful and elegant and somehow perfectly weighted for our ears. No revolutionary but right up our alley, what more can we say. We chose Who Stole The Weekend this week instead of the more delicately plaintive Coward because we've just figured out, after about two years, what the chorus is. Ha. Soppy as hell but cute, eh.
a minute with you is better than a year with myself..
Next up is The Horrors who, I am assured, would definitely get it, and their party-in-a-morgue anthem Death At The Chapel which we quite enjoy, after a while. Their current song hasn't grown on us yet but then it took a while for Death At The Chapel to so, we'll leave it for now. Then we have the infinitely more artfilled The Rapture and possibly our favourite anthem of theirs, Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks, which combines out their awkward post punk with a disco sensibility and sing-a-long chorus. Okay, House Of Jealous Lovers is better but it's not as arty so, nyah. Neither is Listen Up! but we've been listening to it more this week and it's possibly the song, if any, that'll get us liking Gossip after years of dismissing them. Slinky and soulful and like acoustic Basement Jaxx trying to impress Giles Peterson. Comedown disco of some description.
The current single from Sound Team, No More Birthdays, sounds just like TV On The Radio, a band we're only just considering liking after ages of dismissing them as being too plasticky. Still, this booming post artrock affair is far from plastic and more likely to swallow your pets whole, which is good. Unlike Pernice Brothers who annoyed us slightly this week by being overly precious about their music, and whose pretty little pop ditties wouldn't eat anyone. This track, Microscopic View, is delightful in its ability to float and pirouette through yor room - good job we don't judge music on its creators, eh.
A bit of a random choice next, William's Five Minute Wonder is a song we don't love start to finish but has a little hook bit that we're very partial too. From the Tough Love label and a little chuggy post punk affair which strays in places too close to garage rock but brings is all back with that but she wants me on fire, oH no Oh no!. Hey! After which we've got the infinitely more solid The Playwrights and Why We've Become Invisible, a band that grew on us over time after their music proved too much to digest all at once we don't think we've even reach the centre of their dense tentacle strewn indie rock even yet. Unlike Tunng who we reckon we've got the measure of. Don't take that as a criticisim, though, as the likes of Bodies is so heavenly we can still have their songs creep up on us like a loved one in the night, wrap warm hands around our eyes and breathe "guess who" into our ears and not have it be anything other than spirit lifting after a long day. Mmmmm.
Now. We're not saying Gay Against You are the anti-Tunng but their music is more like your lover repeatedly kicking you in the stomach with big rubber wellies. In the best way possible. We've been courting them for ages and we finally bought their album and what a joy it is. Bleeping, raging, madcap and pretentious as you like. It's pisstake sensibility does grate on a few songs and occasionally it's cheap and tinny but when it's good, like TeleRAD, it's like drill 'n' bass raping a fruit machine. To be fair Hot Chip are a lot more subdued but then as much as Gay Against You are exciting songs like Arrest Yourself and the whole The Warning album is just dripping with sweet intricacies and moments of genius. Different, sure, but better, ultimately.
Our other nwlx band of the moment is Cutting Pink With Knives whose impenetrable destructive noise vs the-screamy-bit-in-an-emo-song racket is harder to write off as all front and no trousers. This song, We Are The 18th Largest Town In England stands out because it cuts entirely out of its usual raa riot and gives us a bit of slinky disco screamo which, surely, is a bastard genre if ever we heard one. Thankfully Fujiya & Miyagi fuse much less antithetic styles with their consistantly beautiful music, in this case the gorgeous Collarbone which features the mildly nonsensical lyric got to get a new pair of shoes to kick it with her, not kick it with you. Though if all that gets too smoooootth jazzzz for you, get your battering ram around Milanese, a dubstepish artist who isn't afraid to drop the dub and just give us some whiplash from time to time, something perhaps the likes of Boxcutter and Pinch are missing. The whole album is full of crunchy, blistered moments like this, albeit Sight Beyond Sight, included this week, is a bit more stretched out and complete overall.
Back into the art wave world and the angry Hot Club de Paris of Dananananaykroyd give us their poppy cum messy post anglepop effort, which goes from twisty, satisfying indie into more charged, biting bits towards the midsection. All good noise. More smooth than that are Junior Boys and their softly softly eighties via nu now melancholy pop treats, in this case The Equalizer (Morgan Geist Graphic Remix), which we chose over the almost equally good original cuz of the cool little sped up vocal bits. Wonderful album, by the way.
Also wonderful is the Tired Irie single Like. Gentle. Men., on the also pretty damn good Try Harder label. Downtempo post hardcore with one of those always fun sing-a-long sections in the middle and wandering, multifaceted instrumental bits either side of it. Superb. Not as flat out in your face, however, as Triple Schipol, our favourite Gay Against You song, which throws itself between out of tunes bleeps - if such a thing were possible - interjecting bits of noise and drum attack, frenzied vocals, washy synths and acid lines of bass, with a big hip hop beat midsection. Watch out for that kitchen sink.
What more is there to say about Atlantis To Interzone or, indeed, the Klaxons in general. We saw them live earlier this week and managed to have a bit of a chat to them too which was cool. Their live show was incredible because, they played however many songs, only a few of which we knew and yet, despite their claims of having short attention spans and, indeed, for the different styles on display, every one sounded like a song you'd known for ages. The instant appeal of the songs they manage to pen is absolutely top drawer. However none of them are quite as big as Atlantis To Interzone, which'll have yer 'ead off.
Which brings us to our number one for the week, all minute and five second of I ♥ Structuralists by Cutting Pink With Knives. It's loud, it's abrasive, it's got swearing in it and it's absolutely immense. You can't really dance to it as maybe go looting and you can't really nod your head and agree with it as much as be pinned to a wall by the marauding relentlessness of the machine gun drum attacks and incessant screaming. Y'know how we don't like Enter Shikari, well we don't like them because their an average hardcore band who underpin their songs with average nineties synth dance and get called new rave cuz, well, it's dance music and rock music, right? Problem is, the two are both average and they're not linked in any way, might as well be two separate bands in two separate rooms. Cutting Pink on the other hand have the two disperate starting points and link them so they're so integral that you'd barely bother to mention them separately. The synth and electronics are just part of the music and, moreover, they're not cheapy little rip offs of another genre, just another instrument in the mix. Superb stuff. A little painful to listen to perhaps but hey, that's just another compliment to add to the mix.
It was an interesting Twenty this week but a good one, definitely. More than usual we kept track of the songs we were listening to throughout the week and that gives us a bit more variety than we usually get in the twenty, with songs from the past year rather than just the past week cropping up. Plus a couple we've been waiting for for ages..
Kicking off with Buffseeds and Who Stole The Weekend, which is as old as it gets for us. Apparently Buffseeds are now IKO but it's a similar path they tread. Have you ever read one of our write ups for a song we don't like where we say "this is probably someone somewhere's favourite song", Buffseeds write those sort of songs for us. Simple, not massively adventurous but just delightful and elegant and somehow perfectly weighted for our ears. No revolutionary but right up our alley, what more can we say. We chose Who Stole The Weekend this week instead of the more delicately plaintive Coward because we've just figured out, after about two years, what the chorus is. Ha. Soppy as hell but cute, eh.
a minute with you is better than a year with myself..
Next up is The Horrors who, I am assured, would definitely get it, and their party-in-a-morgue anthem Death At The Chapel which we quite enjoy, after a while. Their current song hasn't grown on us yet but then it took a while for Death At The Chapel to so, we'll leave it for now. Then we have the infinitely more artfilled The Rapture and possibly our favourite anthem of theirs, Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks, which combines out their awkward post punk with a disco sensibility and sing-a-long chorus. Okay, House Of Jealous Lovers is better but it's not as arty so, nyah. Neither is Listen Up! but we've been listening to it more this week and it's possibly the song, if any, that'll get us liking Gossip after years of dismissing them. Slinky and soulful and like acoustic Basement Jaxx trying to impress Giles Peterson. Comedown disco of some description.
The current single from Sound Team, No More Birthdays, sounds just like TV On The Radio, a band we're only just considering liking after ages of dismissing them as being too plasticky. Still, this booming post artrock affair is far from plastic and more likely to swallow your pets whole, which is good. Unlike Pernice Brothers who annoyed us slightly this week by being overly precious about their music, and whose pretty little pop ditties wouldn't eat anyone. This track, Microscopic View, is delightful in its ability to float and pirouette through yor room - good job we don't judge music on its creators, eh.
A bit of a random choice next, William's Five Minute Wonder is a song we don't love start to finish but has a little hook bit that we're very partial too. From the Tough Love label and a little chuggy post punk affair which strays in places too close to garage rock but brings is all back with that but she wants me on fire, oH no Oh no!. Hey! After which we've got the infinitely more solid The Playwrights and Why We've Become Invisible, a band that grew on us over time after their music proved too much to digest all at once we don't think we've even reach the centre of their dense tentacle strewn indie rock even yet. Unlike Tunng who we reckon we've got the measure of. Don't take that as a criticisim, though, as the likes of Bodies is so heavenly we can still have their songs creep up on us like a loved one in the night, wrap warm hands around our eyes and breathe "guess who" into our ears and not have it be anything other than spirit lifting after a long day. Mmmmm.
Now. We're not saying Gay Against You are the anti-Tunng but their music is more like your lover repeatedly kicking you in the stomach with big rubber wellies. In the best way possible. We've been courting them for ages and we finally bought their album and what a joy it is. Bleeping, raging, madcap and pretentious as you like. It's pisstake sensibility does grate on a few songs and occasionally it's cheap and tinny but when it's good, like TeleRAD, it's like drill 'n' bass raping a fruit machine. To be fair Hot Chip are a lot more subdued but then as much as Gay Against You are exciting songs like Arrest Yourself and the whole The Warning album is just dripping with sweet intricacies and moments of genius. Different, sure, but better, ultimately.
Our other nwlx band of the moment is Cutting Pink With Knives whose impenetrable destructive noise vs the-screamy-bit-in-an-emo-song racket is harder to write off as all front and no trousers. This song, We Are The 18th Largest Town In England stands out because it cuts entirely out of its usual raa riot and gives us a bit of slinky disco screamo which, surely, is a bastard genre if ever we heard one. Thankfully Fujiya & Miyagi fuse much less antithetic styles with their consistantly beautiful music, in this case the gorgeous Collarbone which features the mildly nonsensical lyric got to get a new pair of shoes to kick it with her, not kick it with you. Though if all that gets too smoooootth jazzzz for you, get your battering ram around Milanese, a dubstepish artist who isn't afraid to drop the dub and just give us some whiplash from time to time, something perhaps the likes of Boxcutter and Pinch are missing. The whole album is full of crunchy, blistered moments like this, albeit Sight Beyond Sight, included this week, is a bit more stretched out and complete overall.
Back into the art wave world and the angry Hot Club de Paris of Dananananaykroyd give us their poppy cum messy post anglepop effort, which goes from twisty, satisfying indie into more charged, biting bits towards the midsection. All good noise. More smooth than that are Junior Boys and their softly softly eighties via nu now melancholy pop treats, in this case The Equalizer (Morgan Geist Graphic Remix), which we chose over the almost equally good original cuz of the cool little sped up vocal bits. Wonderful album, by the way.
Also wonderful is the Tired Irie single Like. Gentle. Men., on the also pretty damn good Try Harder label. Downtempo post hardcore with one of those always fun sing-a-long sections in the middle and wandering, multifaceted instrumental bits either side of it. Superb. Not as flat out in your face, however, as Triple Schipol, our favourite Gay Against You song, which throws itself between out of tunes bleeps - if such a thing were possible - interjecting bits of noise and drum attack, frenzied vocals, washy synths and acid lines of bass, with a big hip hop beat midsection. Watch out for that kitchen sink.
What more is there to say about Atlantis To Interzone or, indeed, the Klaxons in general. We saw them live earlier this week and managed to have a bit of a chat to them too which was cool. Their live show was incredible because, they played however many songs, only a few of which we knew and yet, despite their claims of having short attention spans and, indeed, for the different styles on display, every one sounded like a song you'd known for ages. The instant appeal of the songs they manage to pen is absolutely top drawer. However none of them are quite as big as Atlantis To Interzone, which'll have yer 'ead off.
Which brings us to our number one for the week, all minute and five second of I ♥ Structuralists by Cutting Pink With Knives. It's loud, it's abrasive, it's got swearing in it and it's absolutely immense. You can't really dance to it as maybe go looting and you can't really nod your head and agree with it as much as be pinned to a wall by the marauding relentlessness of the machine gun drum attacks and incessant screaming. Y'know how we don't like Enter Shikari, well we don't like them because their an average hardcore band who underpin their songs with average nineties synth dance and get called new rave cuz, well, it's dance music and rock music, right? Problem is, the two are both average and they're not linked in any way, might as well be two separate bands in two separate rooms. Cutting Pink on the other hand have the two disperate starting points and link them so they're so integral that you'd barely bother to mention them separately. The synth and electronics are just part of the music and, moreover, they're not cheapy little rip offs of another genre, just another instrument in the mix. Superb stuff. A little painful to listen to perhaps but hey, that's just another compliment to add to the mix.