Twenty Unpredictable Songs
Twenty Songs, 11 February 2007
Yep. Bit late but it was a busy week last week. We went to Newcastle to miss Blood Red Shoes and Manchester to miss an NME aftershow party. However, we didn't let that bring us down. Instead we got back on the surfboardhorseaphorism and rode. This is the result.
We kick off with the newie from The Maccabees after their would-have-been-number-one-for-a-month-if-Twenty-Songs-wasn't-on-hiatus smash. This one, About Your Dress, definitely finds them in more control of the sound they're rapidly perfecting and rather than makes us think First Love was a fluke makes us think it's something they could put their fingers to again and we look forward to it very very much. Next up, Bloc Party get a rare first outing with The Prayer (Does It Offend You, Yeah? Remix) which reminds us a lot of Banquet, probably Bloc's best moment to date. We will also be keeping tabs on Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s movements. If only cuz we like a bit of punctuation in our artists names.
Sorry. We should speed this up eh. So, Field Music you know and are here cuz we finally got 'round to writing their recent album up, raves all round but Sit Tight is a good example of how much less minimal their sound is now. We haven't mentioned I Was A Cub Scout much but we quite like their fey indie dalliances. Not as bleeding as other but Pink Teeth is very well penned and catchy in its way. Unlike Pre who bleed all over and cut through shows, we assume, like a rusty butchers knife, Let Me Touch Him being no exception. Back to the recent indie pretty boys and Canadian act Tokyo Police Club have a very good song in the shape of just-shy-of-dance-y number Nature Of The Experiment which you can imagine works surprisingly well at loud volumes. That's right, you can anticipate being surprised by how well it works.
Very much not cute indie kids are Cutting Pink With Knives whose Didi Got Fisted At The Smiths Disco almost doesn't sound as violent as its title until about two thirds of the way through it's minute and a half girth it just starts raping your speakers and that's not pretty. Very much not rape is Tipper and Unlock The Geometry from the latest of his albums we picked up. We like Relish The Trough but we know it's never gonna be one we love like we did his first and third albums. Ah, shame. Still, downtempo leftfield chilled bassfuck and beats is rarely wrong when Tipper puts his hands to it. Next up is Bloc Party making up that rare double, this time with the original The Prayer, although we were very tempted to put Phones in again. You know the song, it's probably everywhere. Unlike Gay Against You who in a way deserve to be with their bright, garish TeleRAD but probably own't be cuz it also has a bit of speakerbashing going on, despite the rest of it being quite family-oriented fun.
Into the top ten and You Bring Me Down is just one of the songs we never got to see Blood Red Shoes perform cuz the girl (who we forgive because we're a bit in love with) lost her voice. No matter, it still sounds damn good and we're still well up for finding them in future and bugging them with our presence. Unlucky. Actually, we also missed Goose on the same night we think and that might've been a more assured trip, too. The Belgian band crop up here in the shape of Girl, one of the many filthy synth sleaze 'n' roll cutlets from their superb Bring It On debut. Speaking of which, we keep getting hold of these little teasers for a proper available in shops single from Charlie Fanclub, who gets better every time we hear something new by them. This time it's Subtle Talk and while not necessarily the most subtle (in a good way), definitely deserving of some talk.
Next up is Truflun from Einóma who we love and have recently written a Pure Love about, as well as a write up of the EP that spawned it. Needles to say, we can't wait to get hold of the next album from the Icelandic duo. Mmm. Which brings us, careering to the other end of the musical spectrum, to Klashnekoff and his chilling, downtempo, dubbed out blend of British Hip Hop and Son Of Niah. Another stoke of lyrical beautiful from the boy, with a wonderful arabic flute tying together the luxurious, spacey bass. Yum. You know we love it.
Into the top five and Catscan by This Et Al is probably bored of hearing us talk about it but we can't stop so here it is again. We've since got the latest single from the Leeds quartet and you lucky folk can soon get your dirty, ungrateful mits on their album. Which we strongly recommend in both cases. It'll be some treat. Apparently we might be going to see Klaxons this weekend although it depends on our dancing buddy's plans. Either way, we know whenever we hear it and in whatever context, It's Not Over Yet will be a night highlight - indeed, it was so on the night we didn't get to see Blood Red Shoes. Indeed, it almost made the whole journey worthwhile.
Into the top three and my word, this is more like three joint number ones. Number one number three is That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy by Scot uber-miserablists The Twilight Sad. We want to reserve words about this set for more lengthy gushings du temp en temps but we have mentioned them before. It's just that this week we finally got hold of their US only EP and my word, it's so good. So so good it almost made us cry. We were expecting big things from the band sure, they stood out on other compilations. What we weren't expecting is to have stumbled upon a band who could easily go on to be One Of Our Favourite Ever. Staggeringly powerful solemnity building across sulking harpsichord into massive crescendo driven post rock. Right up there with..
Well, Aereogramme actually. We genuinely were expecting to be disappointed by their latest album. We got Seclusion which wasn't very good. We had heard it was less bombastic than previous releases. We got the album on the day of release but we didn't expect to love it. That was still the case after having played it through once. We were so wrong it's almost embarrassing. Number one number two is Conscious Life For Coma Boy but could have been one of half a dozen from that album. It's just majestic, epic and still pounding but from a distance, under the covers, in the dark and without the volume. Not what we hoped for but more than we desreved for our unforgivable lack of faith.
Which, funnily, could also be said for number one number one, Onkawara by Xerox Teens a band we can genuinely say we never expected to ever top a chart of ours. We liked Darlin', sure, but we didn't like it nearly enough to love the band and while they seemed funny in a Artrocker interview some time ago, just the sheer amount that Artrocker bang on about them made us think we would never. They talk about them being exciting and punk but they're not, they're too slow to be a dance band or jittery or anything like that. Once you get past that, though, Onkawara quicky lodges itself somewhere in your spine as a slow-spasm lounge-angular ode to whatever the hell Onkawara is. It's just too infectious for words and more infectious than a song as simple and restrained as this should ever be.
What can we say, we are just wrong about everything all the time.
Yep. Bit late but it was a busy week last week. We went to Newcastle to miss Blood Red Shoes and Manchester to miss an NME aftershow party. However, we didn't let that bring us down. Instead we got back on the surfboardhorseaphorism and rode. This is the result.
We kick off with the newie from The Maccabees after their would-have-been-number-one-for-a-month-if-Twenty-Songs-wasn't-on-hiatus smash. This one, About Your Dress, definitely finds them in more control of the sound they're rapidly perfecting and rather than makes us think First Love was a fluke makes us think it's something they could put their fingers to again and we look forward to it very very much. Next up, Bloc Party get a rare first outing with The Prayer (Does It Offend You, Yeah? Remix) which reminds us a lot of Banquet, probably Bloc's best moment to date. We will also be keeping tabs on Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s movements. If only cuz we like a bit of punctuation in our artists names.
Sorry. We should speed this up eh. So, Field Music you know and are here cuz we finally got 'round to writing their recent album up, raves all round but Sit Tight is a good example of how much less minimal their sound is now. We haven't mentioned I Was A Cub Scout much but we quite like their fey indie dalliances. Not as bleeding as other but Pink Teeth is very well penned and catchy in its way. Unlike Pre who bleed all over and cut through shows, we assume, like a rusty butchers knife, Let Me Touch Him being no exception. Back to the recent indie pretty boys and Canadian act Tokyo Police Club have a very good song in the shape of just-shy-of-dance-y number Nature Of The Experiment which you can imagine works surprisingly well at loud volumes. That's right, you can anticipate being surprised by how well it works.
Very much not cute indie kids are Cutting Pink With Knives whose Didi Got Fisted At The Smiths Disco almost doesn't sound as violent as its title until about two thirds of the way through it's minute and a half girth it just starts raping your speakers and that's not pretty. Very much not rape is Tipper and Unlock The Geometry from the latest of his albums we picked up. We like Relish The Trough but we know it's never gonna be one we love like we did his first and third albums. Ah, shame. Still, downtempo leftfield chilled bassfuck and beats is rarely wrong when Tipper puts his hands to it. Next up is Bloc Party making up that rare double, this time with the original The Prayer, although we were very tempted to put Phones in again. You know the song, it's probably everywhere. Unlike Gay Against You who in a way deserve to be with their bright, garish TeleRAD but probably own't be cuz it also has a bit of speakerbashing going on, despite the rest of it being quite family-oriented fun.
Into the top ten and You Bring Me Down is just one of the songs we never got to see Blood Red Shoes perform cuz the girl (who we forgive because we're a bit in love with) lost her voice. No matter, it still sounds damn good and we're still well up for finding them in future and bugging them with our presence. Unlucky. Actually, we also missed Goose on the same night we think and that might've been a more assured trip, too. The Belgian band crop up here in the shape of Girl, one of the many filthy synth sleaze 'n' roll cutlets from their superb Bring It On debut. Speaking of which, we keep getting hold of these little teasers for a proper available in shops single from Charlie Fanclub, who gets better every time we hear something new by them. This time it's Subtle Talk and while not necessarily the most subtle (in a good way), definitely deserving of some talk.
Next up is Truflun from Einóma who we love and have recently written a Pure Love about, as well as a write up of the EP that spawned it. Needles to say, we can't wait to get hold of the next album from the Icelandic duo. Mmm. Which brings us, careering to the other end of the musical spectrum, to Klashnekoff and his chilling, downtempo, dubbed out blend of British Hip Hop and Son Of Niah. Another stoke of lyrical beautiful from the boy, with a wonderful arabic flute tying together the luxurious, spacey bass. Yum. You know we love it.
Into the top five and Catscan by This Et Al is probably bored of hearing us talk about it but we can't stop so here it is again. We've since got the latest single from the Leeds quartet and you lucky folk can soon get your dirty, ungrateful mits on their album. Which we strongly recommend in both cases. It'll be some treat. Apparently we might be going to see Klaxons this weekend although it depends on our dancing buddy's plans. Either way, we know whenever we hear it and in whatever context, It's Not Over Yet will be a night highlight - indeed, it was so on the night we didn't get to see Blood Red Shoes. Indeed, it almost made the whole journey worthwhile.
Into the top three and my word, this is more like three joint number ones. Number one number three is That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy by Scot uber-miserablists The Twilight Sad. We want to reserve words about this set for more lengthy gushings du temp en temps but we have mentioned them before. It's just that this week we finally got hold of their US only EP and my word, it's so good. So so good it almost made us cry. We were expecting big things from the band sure, they stood out on other compilations. What we weren't expecting is to have stumbled upon a band who could easily go on to be One Of Our Favourite Ever. Staggeringly powerful solemnity building across sulking harpsichord into massive crescendo driven post rock. Right up there with..
Well, Aereogramme actually. We genuinely were expecting to be disappointed by their latest album. We got Seclusion which wasn't very good. We had heard it was less bombastic than previous releases. We got the album on the day of release but we didn't expect to love it. That was still the case after having played it through once. We were so wrong it's almost embarrassing. Number one number two is Conscious Life For Coma Boy but could have been one of half a dozen from that album. It's just majestic, epic and still pounding but from a distance, under the covers, in the dark and without the volume. Not what we hoped for but more than we desreved for our unforgivable lack of faith.
Which, funnily, could also be said for number one number one, Onkawara by Xerox Teens a band we can genuinely say we never expected to ever top a chart of ours. We liked Darlin', sure, but we didn't like it nearly enough to love the band and while they seemed funny in a Artrocker interview some time ago, just the sheer amount that Artrocker bang on about them made us think we would never. They talk about them being exciting and punk but they're not, they're too slow to be a dance band or jittery or anything like that. Once you get past that, though, Onkawara quicky lodges itself somewhere in your spine as a slow-spasm lounge-angular ode to whatever the hell Onkawara is. It's just too infectious for words and more infectious than a song as simple and restrained as this should ever be.
What can we say, we are just wrong about everything all the time.