Silver Tongues’ debut really felt like they wouldn’t disappoint; a stomping intro with some claps, a little funeral organ in “Highways” and interesting but familiar texture to the thing - a bit like David Sylvian/Japan - except sung a little off; showing not inadmirable weakness. Then I realise it’s not really Japan being channelled here, it’s Matchbox fucking 20.
Some would accuse this site of being one filled with endless pessimism; the glass is always half empty for us. With this in mind there has never been a more fitting EP to land in our inbox than “Yawnin’ in the Dawnin’” by Barry, a folk-rock four-piece. They feel like a capable band cracking out tunes, but they need their glasses topped up - with more whores whiskey and probably lime.
Genco’s debut is little more than whisper on the U-bahn between tipsy would-be-lovers. Deathly sparse but unrestrained you feel that the effort gone into making this album, the pure energy would be barely enough to boil an nearly empty kettle and make a cup of weak tea - even in a pyramid shaped bag which allows effortless circulation of the ground tea-leaves - without milk.
And yet it is hard not to be won over by the half-heard half-hearted mutterings which serve as lyrics dropped between the cracks of fat but quiet bleep-tone melodies.
The actual content of the album is hard to pin down, but in recent interviews Genco’s lead layabout suggested “The album is really about how our pacifism and apathy is the only way to overcome the right-wing, pseudo-fascist, proto-grass-roots movements we’re seeing spring up all over Europe. It’s like: “Chill out guys; the modern consumerist bourgeois lifestyle comes with super cakes and a great wine list. Join in!”.”
While their battle cry isn’t exactly enough to get the blood boiling, they have made the perfect album to listen to while eating cakes.
This week Wallscenery Demos offer up their third album for our greedy ear-gullets to swallow whole or choke on at least. The album opens with promising guitar fuzz, the kind of muted guitar fuzz-waves-in-aglass-box noises you absolutely fucking loved from Here Come The Warm Jets. The guitars lace and play with each other, one cheekily unzipping the other in the hope of something meaty.
Sadly it’s a little flaccid. The vocals kick in and you feel your heart sink a little. No it isn’t bad per se - it’s just hidden. Much like cottaging the vocals try and get away with it without exposing themselves to the world.
Shy and retiring wallflower make this mistake, self produced musicians make this mistake - they know the words so they can hear it; for us however it’s mostly lost.
This is made all the worse by the snatches you catch with your deep-diving ear-nets; hollow echoes of Bright Eyes B-Sides and Love is Hell era Ryan Adams fragility (not as good mind, but there are wiffs of it there.)
The album continue to piss warm jets all over itself when petulant samples of “The Big Lebowski” are thrown in for the album’s fourth track. This track serves only to burn whatever good will you have for the artist.
It’s hard to drag up venom for an album standing in front of you soaked in it’s own effluence - especially when you feel somewhere that it is not ineptitude, but shyness that has made it this way.
But what do I know? VISIT HERE TO HEAR AND SEE FOR YOURSELF WITH YOUR OWN EYE STALKS & EAR GULLETS.
Sorry I Took So Long contains the required wet popping noises of a ping pong ball being blasted from the masterful vagina of a bangkok hooker and hip-hop inspired tape-warble to place it firmly in the “post dubstep” landscape.
Yet this particular part of that sound-scape real-estate equates to something more like daft-punk asleep at the wheel of an aging hipster coach trip to the seaside. It’s headed for somewhere like Bournemouth if you’re interested, which you’re not.
Video game noises litter the streets of this seaside town like sweet-wrappers - but not identifiable ones; in short there is nothing of real nostalgic substance here, no right hook to your jellyfish-head to remind you of summers indoors playing Kid Chameleon and Toejam & Earl.
Yet this is a little unfair. If you were somewhere really fucking cool, but with nothing to say, and this was playing at ear-bleeding volumes you wouldn’t care - but then you’d be focusing on your own reflection in the coke-dusted mirror-table-tops anyway.
There are some good starts here - but they inevitably wander off down the beach, far away from the tune. Sometime you think there might be a rallying call when a few lost and abandoned ideas (if you’re not back at the bus by 4.30pm we’re leaving you here) gather under a burnt out pier - but you’ll be disappointed.
But hey, WHY THE FUCK take my word for it when you can HEAR, SEE, BUY RIGHT HERE.
National pride. Some think it’s out of fashion, some think it’s been made illegal by insane jobsworths (turns out the people who believe this are insane jobsworths), and others make music to celebrate it.
Enter stage left: Fifty/Fifty. British? Yep. Young? Yep. Angry as a badger with a hangover? Certainly. Proud of their country? As much as anyone could want them to be.
Political Affairs is a drama played out through a series of every English sounds; jangly hook-heavy guitars, deep-dubstep inspired bass, relentless but unobtrusive drums and a very average man shouting like singing as best he can.
What does he shout about? Well, he shouts about how he’d like Kate Middleton to give him a blowjob on the eve of the Royal Wedding - producing gems like: “You could be my angry pirate Queen / While you’re looking at William I’ll remember how you were winking at me.”
It’s run-over almost-rhymes which make the delivery so perfect, like the song’s lyrics implode and topple like waves breaking and crashing. And it seems to have turned me all whimsical, the cunts.
Other tracks imagine Blair and Clinton taking turns with Hillary, John Major’s early and unpleasant meetings with Michael Howard (best not talk about that really) and what I’ll only describe as a “Thatcher Solo.”
An album that does what it says on the tin, some will find the subject matter unpleasant, other (cool people) will understand the lacing of civic pride, rise to the occasion and sing the national anthem while thinking of the queen sitting on the throne, naked surrounded by loyal corgi’s. Fifty/Fifty, Political Affairs: You’ve got half a chance to enjoy it.
World Dirtnap aren’t your average Finnish electro metal band. Sponsored entirely by Nokia they’re the bridge we’ve always wanted between the bleepity-bleep of chiptune-pop and neo-classical Finnish “Dark” metal. Not only are they they bridge, they’re under it as well - eating …things.
Sponsored by Nokia (yes, THAT Nokia) World Dirtnap use a series of ringtones, keytones and looping samples of international dialing tones to weave their semi-orchestral spikey “dark” metal. The full power of the Nokia 3310’s ringtone composer is use to great effect, but nothing can be compared to when they lay their dicks on the line with solo using only the sound-effect of “Snake”.
Videos of the group working together during their “4G OR BUST!” tour look like your average chiptune band on steroids - troll steroids, no: Nordic troll steroid… In short they look like huge men with massive thumbs hammering away at tiny plastic phone like blonde ADD gorillas - blonde ADD gorillas on Nordic troll steroids.
As for the racket they make? It’s a very fine one. Hunkle Splurson, the band’s front man (usually singing spasmodically into a Nokia E-90 and a Nokia 9210 Communicator - both employed for their superior voice compression) breaks out what can only be described as pointy ear honey - for your ear bees, see? Who can honestly say they don’t like the noise of distorted ringtones pounding out of a huge Marshall stack? No, exactly, you fucking love it.
Cartyne’s first album is a mixed bag. Yes, they take a mighty run up at genre hopping, mostly crashing into the barriers and bouncing off rather than through anything - but the sheer variation of ricocheting musicality is impressive.
Treading old folk lines at its core Carntyne find ways to augment their sound with dub, reggae, progressive house & thrash-core. In break-away-hit-summer-sing-along-anthem “Mickey Mouse Goes Down On Goofy” you can hear the 6-piece barely containing their joy within in the limits of the song.
The vocals swing erratically too. From soft a soothing jazz-cooing (often mixed with jerky reggae guitars and spacey-house beats) to cod-comedy-rap breaks.
The album really shines on the 14-minute album-ender “Cunting Double-Cunt!” which will literally have your lungs turn into a swarm if giant wasps with stingers deisgned to kill you with kindness. Exploding kindness. Made of Candifloss, which in turn is made out of endless Rebecca Black choruses.
In essence this is the second best album released this year.
Spontaneous Potential’s first foray into the musical landscape is clearly designed to leave us dazed and confused. Heavy, lazy and violent all at once they’ve produced an album so slippery with spunk that you’d assume they’re the proprietors of an elephantine breeding club.
Heavy sub-sonic beats mix with endless static produced by the front man’s artistry of deep-throating the mic (no, that isn’t euphemistic.) As such the wet and violent punctuation of the beat which passes for “vocals” abrasively remove the top layer of your brain-bag with a flesh-eating-virus soaked scouring brush.
However, when you regain consciousness after your first listen you’ll be forgiven for wanting a bit more from this band. Much like watching two overweight bank-managers wrestle one another in a basement while on ketamine you’ll feel a twinge of emptiness at the pit of your stomach.
Curse Of The Boulder Valley offer us another generic dancy ear-worm. As the dance duo’s 8th studio album in their 3 month career you cannot go wrong in saying they are a prolific pair. Yet their attempts to create aural pleasure always fall a little short in differing ways between one album and the next. So there is one which goes “Wub-Wub-Wub-Wub-Wub-Wub, WubWub-Wub-Wub-Wub” but it isn’t as good as the one which went “Wub Wub Wub, Wub-Wub, Wub-Wub” on the last album, and the one what goes “daka-da daka-da daka-da, DA-DA”? It is nothing like as obligating when it comes to moving your feet as their debut’s opener, you know, the one that sounds a bit like “Duka-do Duka-do daka-daka-da daka-daka-da.”
So who is this for? Well the sweat and vomit filled pools of social interaction (read as blurily attempting to avoid either being sexually assaulted or having your name on the sex offender list while attempting to just get a fucking beer) might lap it up (along with whatever else might pass in front of them). But no, no one really want this, not really, this is muzak to vomit to - and while that sounds like a recommendation, it really isn’t.
