The Strange Death of Liberal England.

I've been hearing whispers about this Portsmouth-based band for some time now and most of them have been as intriguing as they have been favourable. This could however cut both ways; I was thus glad to have the opportunity to check them out live on the Uncut stage at Latitude where they were playing the opening gig at lunch time on Sunday.

It was timely as their first eight-track mini-album Forward March! had been released the previous Monday on Fantastic Plastic Records, which ensured a sizable and enthusiastic turn out.

It was quite clear, even before the set started, that they have a loyal following and it was soon very clear to me why that is. In a set that could only last 40 minutes, why waste time talking? They didn't say a word, other than the sung lyrics, introducing themselves and the songs using hand-written and hand-held placards.

It was very effective and reminded me rather of the occasional frames, conveying plot details, that appeared flickeringly in the days of silent movies. What is more, if you look carefully at the these pictures, you will notice that this is a band very flexible when it comes to who plays which instrument on any particular song.

It all suits their ambitions and circumstances well, I have to say.

This may well be quite deliberate because as the band's name suggests (it is taken from a book of the same title and I'll let you find it and what it was about) they quite wilfully hark back to earlier days in their lyrical content but without any discernible influence from traditional music. The real issue is that they do it incredibly well and had they gone on for two hours longer I'd have happily missed whatever other acts I had planned to go and see!

In some ways, while less obviously obsessed with historical narrative, they reminded me of iLiKETRAiNS and that is another band I very much want to see live.

A Lily for the Spectre

While 'New Young Pony Club' was clearly an act far too metropolitan for the Sunrise Arena at Latitude 2007 it is actually also difficult to imagine an act for whom it could be a setting so absolutely perfect...

Her nu-folk songs - a genre I rather like anyway - are mostly trans-Atlantic rather than obviously British or American so that they are largely without place or time. Add to this the fact she is an artist who also has the folk-tradition of 'patter' between songs - it veered randomly but effortlessly between musings concerning disturbing the owls in the woods and the various hazards of festival toilets - down to a fine art and you can imagine this gig had all the potential to be a memorable one.

While she had swapped the sylvan glades of her native Wisconsin for those of rural Suffolk on a sunny Saturday lunchtime she clearly seemed quite at home there. The other thing is that I had never even heard of Stephanie Dosen until I bought my 'Festival Programme' when I arrived on the Thursday evening.

She is now signed to UK label Bella Union and her début UK album A Lily For The Spectre is available now from all good independent music stores.

While this is her UK début she has previously released an album, Ghosts, Mice and Vagabonds, in the US that is not currently available on Amazon.co.uk or seemingly even from the usually ever so dependable independent UK establishments. I have found four copies available from Amazon Marketplace sellers but the cheapest of these is GBP 25 and all are sent from the US anyway. Amazon.com, for what it is worth, is little better either.

You could however try buying it direct from her website: http://www.stephaniedosen.com/buy.htm It is currently available on CD for US$ 12.00 (about GBP 6.00) but do check whether you will incur shipping and also customs charges as these may well be very significant extra costs. [This information is provided in good faith but I can offer no warranties or guarantees - it is solely your responsibility to ensure that you are confident in the supply of the goods offered and of the security of the services provided by this seller.]

Next up for review - New Young Pony Club

Now in this case I had heard good things about NYPC but almost nothing of their material (except for the single 'Ice Cream') before Latitude and so, as they were headlining the Sunrise Arena on Friday evening, they were high on my list of "must see acts". In fact I was so confident that I would like it I actually ordered their album Fantastic Playroom, which was released on 9th July on Australian label 'Modular Recordings' even though they are a London band and on vinyl as it is available thus, the evening before departing. It actually arrived the day I returned and it was to prove a "good thing" - it instantly transported me back to the previous Friday evening and reminded me why a few bruised ribs were sustained in a wholly good cause.

The Sunset Arena was a venue too small for them and I can well see them performing on the Uncut Stage, or even the main stage, at this (or other similar events) next summer. I suspect that they might follow a trajectory similar to that which CSS have enjoyed in the last year.
The album Fastastic Playroom isn't as good as I expected it to be - it is, in a surprisingly measured and amazingly controlled sort of way, far better than I imagined it would be; perhaps I find it this way because it was a bit unusual to have heard them live before hearing the album? On the other hand it is very largely by playing live that they have secured their current enviable reputation. Go figure - as yet I can't - but no complaints!
Their live performance, whipped to a frenzy by icon-in-waiting Tahita Bulmer, really was quite special and certainly not rambling or self-indulgent. It was stopped once, fairly early on, when the barrier at the front of the stage collapsed and also terminated five minutes early; in both cases the reason given was "Health & Safety" and for once in this dangerously over-regulated world it actually seemed plausible!

This was the moment they launched the set with single 'Ice Cream'.

Photograpy was by this time getting rather difficult and by the time they performed 'The Bomb' it was impossible at the front of the boisterous crowd; not helped by an extremely uneven surface that, while the crowd was entirely good-natured, threatened to cause everyone to collapse in a huge heap. The Sunset Arena is a tent set up in what is really no more than a clearing in the woods and as such it is rather better suited to more earthy music...

Lattitude 2007, just go listen!

As well as the big names the fascinating variety of other acts was, for me perhaps, the greatest attraction of the line up. From pop to nu-folk to rock there was always something interesting to go and hear.
First I'll start with two of the catchiest pure UK pop songs of 2007:

The Hoosiers perform Worried About Ray while opening the main stage on Sunday.

The three of them looked a bit surprised by the space they had to occupy to be quite honest, as this was their first festival gig, but they soon grew in confidence and were actually quite impressive in sound if not in presence. It is, I suspect, going to be a very difficult single to follow and their début album does not appear until late August (Sony BMG).

As for Bolton band Cherry Ghost I was only able to catch the last track of their set on the Uncut Stage, which was the recent single 'People Help The People'. They looked really quite comfortable on a stage this size - arguably it would have suited 'The Hoosiers' better too - and the live version of the single bettered the recorded version in a number of ways. In retrospect I wish I had caught the whole of their live set but here they are...

Cherry Ghost's début album 'Thirst For Romance' was released (Heavenly Records) the previous Monday, 9th July. It is my suspicion that, one way or another, Cherry Ghost may turn out to be with us for longer than The Hoosiers.

CSS Roxxx

A great deal has been written about Brazilian band CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy) in the last nine months and much of it, it has to be said, sounds rather like hyperbole. The first track on their 2006 début album is even rather self-deprecatingly entitled 'CSS Suxxx'.
See them live and you'll probably discover that it isn't the case. You could well argue that the music itself isn't particularly ground breaking - you would be right too - but that is to miss the point altogether. This album is good enough to hold its own on CD - it is ultimately feel-good music - but CSS live is a quite different experience.

This is a band that is not only clearly loving the limelight but also making it shine brighter and, in Lovefoxxx (aka Luisá Matsushita), they also happen to have one of the most charismatic lead singers of the moment.

She came on stage at Latitude wearing a long grey shawl as they launched the set with 'Patins'...

This was soon removed to reveal the sparkling rainbow number that stunned Glastonbury...

... and it lasted the next four songs - this one is 'Alala'.

"I'm much too hot!" she announced as she kicked off her trainers, and then went on to peel the sparkly outfit off while still singing and dancing, part way through 'Art Bitch'!

She is the ultimate nightmare for Security too, liking nothing better than to abandon the stage proper to either sing in the pit, talk to the crowd or even indulge in a bit of crowd-surfing! (Indeed she did all of these things last Saturday and also announced that their second album will be released in December 2007, if SubPop didn't know it already!)

Off-stage again: Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex... was 'unplugged',
with the crowd providing the lead vocals!

Kate Nash - Latitude 2007 and the blue teapot...

I had such a great time at 'Latitude 2007', overdosing on live music, that it has taken this long to get my head around it all. Well almost a week has gone by and I've finally come to some conclusions! There were so many highlights that my choice of starting place is quite arbitrary...

I've decided to start with Kate Nash who performed in the far too small, and also stiflingly hot, 'Film and Music Tent' on Friday afternoon. Partly because I'd made damn sure I got to see this as I've being enjoying her so-called first single Foundations, and the 'b-sides' - which are all different on the three versions: a CD and two 7" vinyl singles - so much that I already intended to post a comment.

Of course it is not really her first single, that was a double a-side Caroline's A Victim/Birds released by MoshiMoshi Records earlier this year (and I reviewed it - see here) but that was in physical terms only available as a very limited 7" release.

The only question that I still had is can she really cut it as a live performer?

Kate Nash performing Birds live @ Latitude 2007. There was soon no doubt whatsoever that she is every bit as good live as when recorded.

Foundations live with stunning keyboard antics and the blue teapot.

The release of her eponymous début album has now been bought forward from late September to 6th August 2007.

Latitude Festival 2007 - live....

'Latitude 2007' was blessed with weather far better than could reasonably have been imagined. It was the 2007 festival to die for - because it had everything that you live for!

It did include headline acts, such as the awesome Arcade Fire, but also plenty of lesser known ones and that is what makes it special; it has taken me all this week to look at all the pictures I took and to ponder and eventually realise what really made 'Latitude 2007' special, which for me at least it most certainly was.

From start to finish it was simply so friendly an event, and one so well organised, that the fact that it was also, as regards artists, a totally awesome event from start to end was almost just a huge bonus.

The main performance area is entered by a bridge constructed across the lake...

The Obelisk stage was a strange, bleak and silent place just an hour after Arcade Fire finished their headline performance Sunday evening.

2007 so far, and my "want to listen to" list (Part 4)

Lots of new items on my list - so no change there - and they are roughly divided into two categories:

• Those that are not new but I want to listen to.
• Those that are simply new.

Amongst the second category are:

• New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom. This is the début album from the London 5-piece, fronted by Tahita Bulmer, who are signed to the Australian indie label Modular. They are playing at Latitude next weekend, so lucky me. They are not really new-rave, as some of the reviews say, just new pop and all the better for it. It is available on vinyl too!
  

The album is out tomorrow, 9th July.

• Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War. The new album from one of Canada's finest bands and the follow up to their 2005 album 'Set Yourself On Fire'. Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan are something of a gold-standard when it comes to boy-girl vocals in my opinion.

It is due to be released in Canada, by Arts & Crafts, on 27th September.

You can download the track "The Night Starts Here" from the Arts & Crafts website. Click here to go straight to the link.

• The Go! Team - Proof Of Youth. The second album by the London & Brighton sextet is to be released in the UK by Memphis Industries (MI) on 10th September, and in America the following day by Seattle's Sub Pop Records. Their first LP, Thunder, Lightning, Strike (2005) was also released by MI in the UK but by Columbia in the US. If anyone could make the sun shine then The Go! Team would be my bet, with CSS (another SubPop signing and a Latitude Festival act) a very close second! The sleeve will probably look a bit like this and the CD will be MI099CD, but we can hope for a vinyl version too as MI are pretty sound in this regard.
  

• Ash - Twilight Of The Innocents. This is to be the last Ash album as they have decided that, with the advent of downloading, the return of the singles band is beckoning once again. That is how they feel and you can't fault them for their integrity - throughout vinyl's darkest hour they always released everything they did on vinyl - and there is no reason to think that they will not continue to do so. What they got in recognition is to become, arguably, one of the most under-rated bands of the last decade! During the writing of this album Charlotte Hatherley (the fourth member of Ash, as both a lead guitarist and vocalist, from 1997 -2006) left for a solo career. She released her début solo album Grey Will Fade (Double Dragon, 2005) , while still with Ash. In 2006 she quit and has since released her second solo album The Deep Blue (2007) on her own Little Sister Records label, including vinyl of course. She plays Latitude Festival next weekend, and also the Reading/Leeds Festival in late August, which also features Ash.

Don't just talk about it... go!!!

Yes, it is true!

The better part of twenty years after I last went to a proper festival I've decided to take my own advice and go to one again. A week on Thursday I will be heading to the far eastern edge of England - the 'Sunrise Coast' - and what I'm reliably told was the best kept festival secret of last year, which returns for its sophomore event this year bigger, and if all goes well, even better.
Click the image above to see the list of bands performing.

Updated: Sunday 8th July:

It is almost exactly a week since I decided, absolutely on the spur of the moment, to take myself off to Latitude. I had concluded that there would be no tickets left, but went to look at the website anyway and to be disappointed. There were still tickets available however (and even still some yesterday too it seems) and, without a further thought for the practicalities, the die was cast when I entered my credit card number and clicked.

A funny week it has been too...
On Monday morning I did wonder for a moment what I had let myself in for; I was suddenly thinking "Am I too old for this now?" . I got over it and ever since I've been feeling ever younger as each day goes by.
It is excitement and I have suddenly rediscovered that childlike feeling of really looking forward to something while simultaneously not knowing quite what to expect - and actually I like it as much now as I did then!

Yesterday I went shopping (in Argos) for cheap camping kit and this was an odd experience too because I already have a collection of camping kit that can keep me warm and snug in the Scottish mountains in winter. The problem is that it is too costly to be worth risking at a summer festival!

To see if the weather will be any better that at Glastonbury you can click on the the image below. No warranties included except to say that I'll be there, on the ground or perhaps sinking in the mud, to report on both the music and the weather!

Woe On the High Street (Part 1.1)

This is merely a continuation of yesterday's ramblings on the state of music retailing. Firstly, thank you those who sent me e-mails on the subject today - they have been read and noted.

I didn't mention independent music retailers (on/off-line) and most of you did! I agree entirely and that is why I focussed on the long established chain-retailers. I suspect that HMV will survive the changes in the medium term and probably return bigger and better - in many ways it is the Marks & Spencer of the music retailing industry and that is an example of a UK retailer that has very successfully pulled itself back together, after a few really rocky years, by a combination of good marketing and re-invention. Nipper is an old dog who needs to learn some new tricks.

HMV can sometimes already be considerably cheaper than Amazon.co.uk, and free delivery is included (it takes a GBP 15 order with amazon.co.uk to qualify).

If I can get the new toy available in "blogger-in-draft" to work then I intend to conduct an entirely anonymous poll to try and find out where my readers buy their music now (by 'now' let's take it to mean 2007 so far).
If that works (and I think the current poll is up and running now) then I'd like to repeat the same survey and, if applicable, ask where you bought your music ten years ago.

If you think I have should have included any other answers, or you want to say anything else about this topic, then please post a comment to this post or e-mail me.

Woe On the High Street (Part 1.0)

I have already mentioned, several times in this blog, the problems that the 'Major Labels' have had and also continue to face. The recent change of ownership of EMI is only the latest in a long line of changes here.
The High Street retail music stores have also been feeling the pressure too - at least in the UK.
Last week HMV announced its profits had halved this year to £50 million. That still sounds a tidy sum, but given it was the return on sales of £2 billion it represents a margin of just 2.5% on sales. For a major High Street retail chain that is a dismal return and it shows just how competitive the market currently is. The smaller chain MVC , and a competitor of HMV, collapsed just before the end of 2006 although 67 of its stores were then acquired by another rival Fopp; a reprieve that has proved short lived as it too went into administration Friday last. It is possible parts of the business might be saved, but it is not clear who might be a buyer.

What has gone wrong?
Not as easy a question as one might expect. It is without doubt a combination of factors, some of which apply far beyond the music/video retailing industry (think travel agents - Thomas Cook announced a raft of store closures this week - and holiday store chains have been merging for several years, etc.)

Here are a list of the problems they face (in no particular order):

• Competition from downloading (legal or otherwise).
• Competition from supermarkets (who discount the current best sellers while not stocking anything else).
• Competition from web-based retailers (Amazon and the rest)
• Out-dated/unappealing retailing space and rapidly rising rentals for new retail space.

Any one would not have been a crisis but the combination of all four is proving near crippling. One thing that links all four factors, as they impact the High Street retailers, can be summed up in a single word - OVERHEADS. High overheads lead to low market competitivness - and that is a fact that it hard to dispute.
Is the current situation the result of an inevitable process with the High Street retailers as mere victims? My answer, given without hesitation, is... NO! NO! NO!

Accuse me of 20/20 hindsight if you like, (I don't work in retail management), but that is actually not a defence option for the afflicted chains: the retail environment is intrinsically fashion-prone and it is all about looking for future trends and therefore involves a high degree of risk-taking.
Had they done that, but somehow missed the mark, I'd have rather more sympathy than I can currently muster. If the retail chains had invested in on-line sales of physical music and of downloads before the market was proven they could have used their then cash-generative businesses to push those "new" markets forward as a logical extension of their existing markets. If they had used their retail advantage, even six years ago, they could have challenged the likes Amazon head-on and it would have made it much more difficult, maybe even impossible, for investor-funded e-businesses to get into the music market in the first place, let alone capture a dominant share of it.
In fact they made no particular concerted attempt to do either. One might well presume that sheer arrogance led them to presume that these developments were simply short-term trendy distractions.
That they failed to take full advantage of on-line sales of physical music might just be regarded as misfortune. That, having missed one huge opportunity, they then also surrendered the next one almost without so much as a whimper, is quite incomprehensible.
'Downloads' came came fairly soon after and to provide them does not require huge investment. The potential was surely obvious and the risk fairly small. That they also missed the opportunity to take the lead with downloads beggars belief: it and could have rescued the situation to a fair degree - so why they didn't latch on to it quicker?

Why has it come to this?
For thirty years, maybe even more, they simply couldn't believe that the gravy-train that they were travelling on would ever hit the buffers. In this way they have fallen into the same trap as the major labels - COMFORT breeds COMPLACENCY.
Complacency has a strange tendency that rather goes against the grain of capitalist greed: young entrepreneurs set things up, and young (or young-at-heart) investors put up the money to do so and both are not risk-averse. If it works out well then, naturally, they get older, richer and more risk-averse as shareholders.
Companies that look solid and risk-averse tend to attract other shareholders of the same persuasion. The senior management they then directly, or indirectly, choose match those ideals and they naturally tend appoint middle management, etc., and from there down employees with new ideas and grand plans either leave for other (probably newer) companies that match their ambition or to set up their own.
That is not necessarily a problem until a large organization is suddenly confronted with a sea-change in its traditional market and competition which, as likely as not will be provided by the sort of companies mentioned above. It is a fair bet that the main rôles in sales and marketing will be run and staffed by people who know exactly the potential weaknesses and strengths of the companies they chose to leave five or even ten years ago.

I'd be very interested to hear anyone's thoughts on this whole topic?

• Have you been/are you an employee in retail music? What do you think?
• Is this just a UK phenomenon? What is the situation in Europe and/or the USA?
• What kind of music stores will there be in 5 or 10 years time?

Or anything else on this subject or the wider implications that is raises. Woe On the High Street (Part 2) will, hopefully, be largely based on your feedback!

Rest assured I'm not going to make any money out of any of this. Google keeps telling my that I should include 'AdSense' on my blog, mentioning the fact that it could earn me money, (10¢/month probably!), but I'm generally inclined against that. If I choose to advertise/promote anything on my blog then I'll be the one who decides what that will be and how and it will be done (and done for free), not least so I can decide exactly where, when and for how long it will appear.
That is my view - do you agree with it?

Glastonbury 2007 - second thoughts

Despite the weather, which was awful today too and thus it took twelve hours to get all the vehicles out of the parking areas, it seems that the performances over the long weekend were almost all of the highest standard.

Amy Winehouse was apparently as show-stoppingly good as ever but she looks as though she was unable to find anything to eat!

I can't help but think that she looked better 1n 2005.

Kate Moss was also there and probably not eating either. In fact it was touch and go if she would leave her Winnebago in case she got muddy...

She was probably wondering what to wear too, but whatever she finally decided on it was unlikely to upstage Brazilian band CSS who have been blazing a musical trail across Britain (and increasingly Europe, Japan and Australasia) for the last year or so and a bit of mud wasn't going to stop them.
The band consists of a male drummer and five girls who don' t entirely believe in the 'Size Zero' idiocy, as is the case with Lily Allen too, that much of the music industry does and they are also proud of it.

CSS defiantly mudless on stage at Glastonbury.

Simply defiant: CSS lead singer Lovefoxxx...

on stage at the (indoor) Great Escape Festival in Brighton in early June 2007.

Glorious Glastonbury!

I tried to go to Glastonbury but didn't get a ticket.
So here I am writing from home, a mere ten miles away (as the crow flies), as the action is coming to an end on Sunday evening. Yes it has rained a lot but for the most part the performances have taken place as planned and the crowd had been good humoured despite the rain and the ensuing mud. If you don't like mud, no showers and very dubious toilets then all I can suggest is don't go to festivals and actually go 'wild camping' instead - no mud if you chose a good spot, in fact no anything unless you have your iPod, but that is not however what a festival is about...

Making the most of it on Saturday!

Mud surfing... a London 2012 Olympic sport?

One new feature was 'The Park Stage', brainchild of Emily Eavis, which suffered a last minute setback when the opening artist, MIA, was ill and unable to perform the inaugural set. Into the breach stepped one of the major names of 2006/7, who was performing on the Pyramid Stage later, performing an impromptu 6-track acoustic set.

Lily Allen covers Blondie's Heart of Glass acoustically...

Surprising cover versions are all the rage these days and many of them are very successful. In her performance this evening Dame Shirley Bassey did not perform the 'Bond Theme' Diamonds Are Forever. The Arctic Monkeys however did the honours by covering it on their headline act on Friday evening! That said Bassey did cover The Doors Light My Fire and also Pink's Get The Party Started, a song that she originally covered for a Marks & Spencer advertising campaign!

When Lily Allen appeared again, as billed on the Pyramid Stage, she had new tricks in store - Lynval Golding joined her on stage for a cover of Blank Expression then she introduced Terry Hall on stage and two original members of early 1980 ska legends The Specials played together on stage for the first time in 22 years and they all performed the 1979 hit single Gangsters.

... and again, electro-backed, on the Pyramid Stage.

Are You Listening?

I'm not asking you the question in the title - but of course I hope you are - rather it is the title of the début solo album by Dolores O'Riordan.

It has been a long time coming but for those of you that can't remember that far back she was the voice of Irish band 'The Cranberries'. I had largely forgotten about them too, but something or other recently reminded me that I didn't actually own any of their albums, even though I was familiar with some of their songs, and I pondered buying a compilation album that sounded quite promising but at about the same time this album became known to me.

'The Cranberries' has now sold over forty million albums, being more successful in the US than in the UK so she, as both vocalist and main songwriter, is unlikely to be under financial pressure to record an album, and furthermore she is married (since 1994 to Don Burton, the former manager of Duran Duran) with three kids, aged 9, 6 and 2, so you can imagine there might well be plenty of competing calls on her time!

To say that this is a case of "better late than never" is to do it a severe injustice - I strongly suspect that it is better because it has evolved over time. Yes it has undercurrents of 'The Cranberries', but is far more than a pale reinterpretation of that era and in particular, when songs demand it, the instruments can be quite strident - but not to the point that they ever swamp the vocals - in fact the main flashback is just how good her vocals were then, and given absolute freedom that they are now even better.
This is still an album likely to sell better in the US I suspect, but there is nothing wrong with that. If the rumours that Andrea Corr is planning a solo career are true, then this might be seen as a very clear shot across the bow; a warning that there will be competition for the market in Irish influenced pop and that elders might be betters!

On the basis of "Are You Listening?" I suspect it will be so because it has some surprises in store.
Track 6 - Stay With Me, with its plaintive verses, huge chorus and general mood is simply the best song that Evanesence didn't write for their first album, Fallen (2004).
That is probably not what almost anyone would have suspected from this release and it certainly surprised me. At other moments it also reminded me, in some ways, of the tracks Isobel and I'm No Angel both from the album "No Angel" by Dido, possibly because she was also influenced by The Cranberries?

My overall opinion:
If you like the kinds of music above then buy it. This is yet another 2007 album that I have come across rather unexpectedly and another that I have no option but to like!

Less is more?

I have been blogging here for nine months now and this is my 54th post. Time flies, as it does inexorably, but it amazes me that I've actually written that many in so short a time!
In that time I have also contributed only two customer reviews to <amazon.co.uk> but they have been amongst the most favourably regarded that I have posted in the last couple of years. Writing the blog has helped with this - but one of them was actually that which made me take the leap into the blog community in the first place!

Heartland

One good thing about buying albums completely unheard is the anticipation of listening for the first time. When you get something by an artist or band that you have never even heard before, and it exceeds all expectations, that is the best discovery of all.

The stupid thing is that I dithered about buying this album for over a month; the reviews I had read were very mixed and, aside from a few totally negative reviews that I ignored completely, one reviewer's favourite tracks seemed to be the least favourite of another! In the end I just bought it anyway. I first listened to it at home one evening because the postman had left it after I went to work and that is just as well as had I been listening to it in the car I would probably have driven into almost every stationary object en route.
If Heartland is not in my top ten albums of 2007 then it is going to be one hell of a year!
The reason for the disparate reviews may, I think, not be too hard to find. If you measure electro-pop in the terms of Goldfrapp and other 21st century albums, including the even more recently released album Trip The Light Fantastic by Sophie Ellis Bextor (I have this too; it is good and I might well review it later), Heartland will come as rather a surprise.
It is in a rather icy style and the music is much more stripped down to basics. It is a modern take on electro-pop as it was in the period 1979 - 1984 but with one important difference... Client is an all female band.
As for the music, you either get it or you don't and although they have borrowed much more in style, rather than substance, from that era there is one exception; track 5 is a cover version of Zerox that was released in July 1979 by the original line up of Adam and The Ants before they released their first album Dirk Wears White Sox, on 'Do It Records', later that year. It was released again as a single in January 1981, reaching #45 in the UK charts. It did not appear on an Adam and the Ants CD until 2004, when Dirk Wears White Sox was finally released with the earlier singles as bonus tracks.
Be that as it may this cover version is absolutely spot on (the "misspelling" on both albums is probably deliberate - Xerox® is a registered trademark) and it sounds as good as almost any cover version I have heard this year - and it is proving a vintage year for those already!

Stand-out tracks for me are:

• The opener Heartland, which is given a short reprise at the end, a trick that works well on this album.
• The irreproachable Lights Go Out. It may be derivative, according to some, but I simply don't care - just turn up the bass and volume and enjoy it for what it is! It is track 3.
• Someone To Hurt - track 6 - a rather slower one but none the worse for that.
• Köln - this is track 9 and if you like it but can't see where it is coming from I suggest the album Vienna by Ultravox (1980) to see how Germanic electro-inventiveness moved into UK chart music.

To be honest there is nothing even remotely mediocre on this album - the whole album is pretty much pitch perfect.

New President, new music?

The title is actually questionable! France does indeed have a new President, promising to make real the winds of change. The music scene in France seems to have beaten him to it - by a long kilometre - but both outcomes are probably symptomatic of a certain sea change.
Born long after the first wave of punk, and too young even to remember the US, Nirvana led, punk renaissance they wisely decided to go back to basics.

The Plasticines do punk, with an intellectual edginess (any self-respecting French band would), but also with the pop sensitivity and brevity that few bands since The Clash have been able to muster in the last twenty five years.
What is more, when it suits them, they can do in French too! The really surprising thing about it all is that The Plasticines are actually four 19-year-old Parisian girls who met at a Libertines concert and decided, apparently there and then, to form a band.
It is an odd story but a good call; as well as writing and singing punk they are now signed to Virgin (France) .

For more info see the following link. (btw it is in French.)

The nearest recent UK equivalent that I can think of is The Subways. It is a fairly good comparison I think although The Subways are a three-piece. Their female co-vocalist, Mary Charlotte Cooper, also happens to be their stunningly good and inventive bass guitarist and co-writer. The 2005 album 'Young For Eternity' has more than a little of the more thoughtful, yet still often bitter and twisted, end of the original punk era about it.

Down Memory Lane... my 'want to listen to' list - part 3

My 'wants' list gets no shorter but I have got used to that now. Here is one more:

Fireworks Night - 'As Fools We Are'
(Kartel Records/Organ Grinder, 2007.)

Usually, and like the example above that falls in the acoustic/lo-fi category I guess, it is new or at least recent items that get added but last week there was an exception or actually two.
On Friday a work colleague and I became involved in a conversation that, one way or another, ended up turning to the influence that late 1970s German electronic music had on Ultravox in the Midge Ure era. I'm sure this is exactly the kind of thing that everyone discusses at work on a Friday afternoon but it was diverting anyway :-)

At the time Midge Ure was recruited to Ultravox he was touring with Thin Lizzy as a stand-in guitarist on their tour of the album 'Roisín Dubh - Black Rose - A Rock Legend', so something of a change of style there!

We both agreed that this was the period 1980-4, and that the 1986 album 'U-Vox' was utter cr*p. I even had the misfortune to pay good money to see Ultravox tour this album live at Wembley Arena and it remains as probably the worst concert I have ever endured. That left us with four albums, of which we could both remember the names of the first two (but own usable copies of neither) and also most of the tracks on them. These are:

• Vienna (1980)
  
• Rage In Eden (1981)

As for the second pair, although I knew I had owned both on vinyl for at least twenty years, I couldn't for the life of me remember their titles! We did however, during the course of the afternoon, correctly remember several of the singles that were taken from them! These albums are:

• Quartet (1982)
• Lament (1984)

Clearly it was time to dig these out and listen once again, which I did that evening. The problem with the first pair is that I only ever owned them on cassette tape and it was a unreliable Chrysalis "Two on One" edition at that. I decided to buy both again - on CD this time as these releases include some bonus tracks (including several of the tracks sung in German) - but in the end I didn't. While investigating the possibilities I made a very interesting discovery and thus, to keep my long-standing vinyl albums company, I have ordered them as the original vinyl releases instead. It cost little more than the cost of the CDs in any case.

Note added: 10th May 2007.
The above artwork for 'Rage In Eden' is not that of the original UK LP release by the way - thanks to the people that e-mailed me about this. The two LPs were waiting for me when I got home from work this evening so next week maybe I'll try and review all four albums together.

Something I learned today...

I very rarely buy compilations and when I do it is usually because I want to get a cross-section of the popular output of an artist or band. Almost inevitably it is therefore one of some antiquity and of which I am insufficiently interested in obtaining all the albums that they released.

I made a rare exception this week and bought a compilation CD that consisted entirely of tracks by new artists and it arrived this morning. What a good idea that turned out to be!
'Something I Learned Today' is a compilation album, released by UK independent label Dance To The Radio, devoted entirely to new artists in the Leeds/Bradford area.

There are more than a few excellent tracks on it; The Grammatics - 'The Shipping Forecast' is one that was quite new to me, and something of a revelation, but while many tracks on the album are pop-rock-indie driven there is one truly remarkable exception. That is Coast - written by, mostly played by, and entirely sung by Laura Groves - because it defies any easy attempt at categorization and is totally acoustic and truly wonderful.

The Besnard Lakes - what, where & who...

The Besnard Lakes are, rather unsurprisingly I suppose, lakes. They are situated somewhere in Canada and are apparently incredibly beautiful. I can't tell you for sure because I have never seen them. I expect it is true but for once Google isn't proving too helpful...
So successfully have Jace Lasek and his wife Olga Goreas made 'The Besnard Lakes' (TBL) the name of their band that the natural feature that inspired them has all but disappeared from the map!

Firstly two apologies:

• The whole musical world does not actually revolve around Brighton (HSCS release 'The Death of Nightlife' next Monday and it too is available on 12" vinyl) and Canada but in this blog it might seem like it just at the moment!
• I'm going to review two perhaps "difficult" albums in succession.

The album 'The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse' has some features in common with my previous review, one being that it takes a bit of patience to see where it is going. It is about the same length, but only eight tracks long, and while 'No Shouts, No Calls' is 'atmospheric' this one falls more into the 'epic' category and even, dare I say it, induces a certain nostalgia.
In some ways it is even easier to make a comparison with Arcade Fire here, but equally unwise to take it too far!

Yes, they are from Montreal, have a husband and wife team at the front, and have a liking for lush instrumental arrangement but then the differences are apparent. TBL are a five-piece but make ready use of other artists on this album, notably Sophie Trudeau - of Godspeed You Black Emperor - on both violin and cello.
TBL however make much more ready use of Olga Goreas on female lead vocals (she predominates overall and particularly on the decidedly heavy numbers that owe much to the influence and use of techniques taken more obviously from 1970s prog-rock and even heavy rock) and while the lyrics are almost always gloomy the songs often still sound remarkably cheerful. The opening track Disaster, which she mostly sings, being a good case in point as it starts off sounding like a lullaby before Jace takes the thread and it gets complicated. It is followed by For Agent 13 that is also sung by Olga but there is much electronic distortion, particularly on the vocals, which gives it a slightly creepy edge and the lyrics are rather more urgent. It is pretty obvious by now that something strange is going on as the percussion is sometimes quite deliberately at odds with the rest (a trick Charlotte Hatherley also uses on her 2007 album 'The Deep Blue').

By the start of track three the album is in full flow and for the next four tracks it is quite unstoppable.

• And You Lied To Me
• Devastation
• Because Tonight
• Ride The Rails

They rock in every sense of the word. Only the last is less than five minutes, and then only by a few seconds, and two are well over seven minutes long. This section of the album is 'epic rock' done properly and not just a pastiche. It takes 1970 'space-rock' and firmly anchors it on planet earth.
And You Lied To Me is sung by Jace and is a fine track with a particularly good finish - even the more subdued TBL tracks tend to build to a finale. If Disaster was light-hearted then Devastation dispels the myth; Olga returns to vocal duties backed by a rhythm section consisting of three bass guitars (one of which she plays herself) and three drummers. There is usually no excuse whatsoever for this kind of indulgence but, without a shred of doubt, it works here!
Because Tonight starts rather like Agent 13 but this time more slowly and with a choral section and some strings, backed by continuing radiophonic garbling, before the track once again turns serious and the guitars make themselves known. This the most "spaced out" song on the album and Jace and Olga sing in harmony. It then ends surprisingly suddenly.
Ride The Rails is another fine track and it is more obviously down to earth than those that came before and the nearest that this album comes to narrative.
Some people have suggested that the final two tracks are "weak". I think that is a relative: while I agree that On Bedford and Grand is the weakest track on the album it is not one I would be bothered to skip. The final track, Cedric's War, I really like. It sounds that the band are just having a lot of fun but as usual the lyrics aren't in the least bit cheerful.