Good Shoes - Buffalo Tom - Field Music - Bjork
- The Pigeon Detectives - Modest Mouse - Peter Bjorn And John
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THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK - Good Shoes
South London's Good Shoes venture into the crowded market of post-punk with a more streamlined take on new wave herky-jerky - like an earnest young Buzzcocks to their rivals' the Clash, the Jam, or XTC.
Good Shoes sweeten their spiky guitars, the attack/release choruses, and hiccupping vocals with some straightforward songwriting about boys in bands (and the girls who love them). If the Arctic Monkeys' success established a new template for UK teen idoldom (realistic diaries of underage drinking and nervous romantic conquests), then Good Shoes paint between the same lines with broader brushstrokes. Extra polish on the debut Think Before You Speak helps this group of barely twentysomethings realise the promise shown in about two years' worth of 7"s, EPs, and demos.
Still fundamentally a singles band, Good Shoes give us plenty of potential iPod-commercial fodder here. Several album tracks sound like potential singles, too. Likely live favorite "Sophia" ("all the pretty girls are screaming, 'Take off your pants!'") again evokes the Arctics with its mention of our underage narrator being tossed from a bar, while "Everybody's Talking" enthusiastically tries out the Futureheads' call-and-response guitar intricacies. "Does it really matter?" Jones calls at the track's glowing conclusion. As welcome as new sounds would be, Good Shoes at least clean up the old ones for potentially new ears.
Download: Good Shoes - THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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THREE EASY PIECES – Buffalo Tom
Of all the what-might've-beens of the grunge era, Buffalo Tom may be the most fondly remembered, because little about the band was divisive. They wrote solid rock 'n' roll songs, performed with vigor and, especially toward the second half of its decade-long run, possessed accessibility. The band's biggest problem was that it hit its commercial stride after recording its best album, Let Me Come Over. Buffalo Tom never had material quite that strong again. Until now.
Three Easy Pieces is a stone-faced ringer for Buffalo Tom’s heyday, but it’s by no means a retread of the past. The dizzying punch of the band’s younger years still exists in uptempo songs like “Bottom of the Rain”, “September Shirt”, and the charging title track; however, the group’s existential weight has grown with time, evidenced by the aching “Bad Phone Call”, the forlorn “Lost Downtown”, and near-epic “Hearts of Palm”. Buffalo Tom has always had a flair for injecting emotional heft into unsuspecting pop form, but here, on songs like “Thrown”, “Pendleton”, and “CC and Callas”, the sincerity digs itself even deeper into the skeletons of the songs.
Download: Buffalo Tom – THREE EASY PIECES
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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TONES OF TOWN – Field Music
The Sunderland trio have a knack for crafting absurdly clever, yet intrinsically simple, pop songs. From the chiming intro and joyous guitar riff of opener ‘Give It Lose It Take It’ right through to album closer ‘She Can Do What She Wants’ with its constantly changing style, bold brassy bass, and sweet as candy vocals. There simply isn’t a bad song on this album.
Field Music are never afraid to try something different – ‘Sit Tight’ features wailing screams at the beginning and beat-boxing at the end, hemming in call-to-arms drums, constantly shifting melodies and a feeling of dark paranoia. The title track is crammed full of strange noises and multilayered vocals, with instruments appearing and disappearing all over the place so you’re never quite sure what it is you’re listening to. Rather than sounding confused or too busy, this approach serves to make you listen harder, straining to discern the marimba or vibraphone or strings or bizarre percussion, and it’s thoroughly charming.
The album has a solid theme of home – beginning with ‘Tones Of Town’ and continuing with a chunk of four songs dedicated to being away from home or feeling dislocated from it. ‘A House Is Not A Home’ has great bouncy guitars and delicate strings (“What’s the use in going home again/when it’s always the same”), which segues seamlessly into ‘Kingston’, dealing with displacement and disillusionment (“You work hard you get paid/but what’s the sense/it really makes no difference”). Then ‘Working To Work’ runs with this feeling, declaring “You’re working to work/and you pay to play” over a sprightly, upbeat melody and catchy, sing-along refrains. ‘In Context’ is explicit in its subject matter – “You’re a long way from home/all of the thoughts you have are not your own” – as the meandering guitar lines, rippling bass and joyous whooping at the end makes you want to dance along.
Although this album is chock full of musical gems, ‘A Gap Has Appeared’ is a particular highlight. With its soft, muted vocal style, multi-layered harmonies and lush strings, it’s so completely enchanting it’d still be perfect without any vocal accompaniment. ‘Closer At Hand’ is a personal favourite – the song seems to suddenly appear, closely segued with the previous track, and simply delights from the very first chord. Chiming guitars, perfect keyboards, lovely little touches like the do-do-do rhythm and a keyboard that sounds like sighing vocals make the song instantly catchy. Always lyrically stunning, they really excel here, and the chorus is mind-blowingly ace: “Don’t you say no/‘cause the longer we go/the closer at hand/I want you still and we are closer at hand”. It doesn’t make any sense written down but I defy anyone to listen to this song and not leap about like a fool with a shit-eating grin their face.
The album is unpredictable, ridiculously clever, catchy as hell and as perfect a pop album as you’re ever likely to hear.
Download: Field Music – TONES OF TOWN
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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VOLTA - Bjork
Here’s a mark of just how special Bjork is, how defined her artistic character: she can invite any amount of guests into the studio – African junk-percussion groups, futurist hip-hop producers, improv drummers, emotive torch-singers, Warp Records techno heads – and still come out with an album that sounds like no one but herself. The Icelandic vocalist’s sixth solo studio album, Volta, is both a work of extraordinary, driven experimentation and glorious, singalong pop – outsider sounds carried into the mainstream through Bjork’s sheer sense of vision.
The opening '’Earth Intruders’' sets the tone for Volta’s multi-faceted, guest-heavy approach. Produced by Timbaland and featuring percussion from collaboration-happy improv drummer Chris Corsano and Konono No.1, a Congolese shanty-town collective who build a polyrhythmic shuffle out of makeshift percussion and electric thumb-pianos, it’s an ecstatic, bounding war march, Bjork chanting ‘We are the earth intruders/We are the paratroopers/Stampede of sharpshooters’. There’s more evidence on Volta that Bjork’s in a percussive kind of mood – Corsano pops up on another track, ‘I See Who You Are’, while another freeform drummer, Brian Chippendale of experimental duo Lightning Bolt adds a distant, chaotic rumble to the Antony Hegarty duet, ‘’The Dull Flame Of Desire’’. But just as common is jarring techno beats, the warm horns of an Icelandic brass section, or the twang of the African kora.
Ultimately, then, it’s easiest to understand Volta through the precocious personality of Bjork herself. Here, she sounds energised and politicised - ‘’Hope’’ is a philosophical tract about suicide bombers, while ‘’Declare Independence’’ finds her chanting ‘Start your own currency/Make your own stamp/Protect your language/Declare independence’ over robust electronic beats and glitches. But also, Volta is shot through with a very immediate, live-for-the-moment passion. On ‘’I See Who You Are’’, Bjork celebrates her lover’s body before aging and death takes its toll: ‘Let’s celebrate now/All this flesh on our bones/Let me push you up against me tightly/And enjoy every bit of you.’ Joyful, expressive, brave, intelligent: in short, another great Bjork album.
Download: Bjork - VOLTA
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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WAIT FOR ME – The Pigeon Detectives
Wait For Me is chock full of smart, snappy indie pop anthems that confront the rigours of youth, its anxieties, its petty squabbles and its hedonsim and sexuality. But aren't they all?, I hear you say. My only bad comment is that despite some excellent tunes, some songs blur into one another and struggle to emerge as anything other than album fillers. It’s a shame, given the potential displayed in its very best moments.
If Romantic Type kicks things off with some crash, bang, wallop drums and sharp guitar riffs to deliver a sparkling indie pop romp, and I Found Out follows seamlessly with more catchy punk-inflicted hooks (think Buzzcocks) and chanty, shout-along backing vocals (think Kaiser Chiefs), then they're merely setting things up for the long haul.
Don’t Know How To Say Goodbye is a cheeky nod to young infatuation and drink that thrives on some spunky hooks but it’s followed by another in the same mould, Caught In Your Trap – ie, similar theme, similar delivery, similar catchiness…
There’s a moment during the opening bars of Can’t Control Myself that you think “aah, slower number” and relish the prospect of a maturer, more reflective offering – but come the minute mark, the guitars kick in and we’re off at breakneck pace again. The song pretty much encapsulates all that’s good and bad about the album. Don’t get me wrong, I like it (sometimes very much) but come the riotous final track I’m Always Right you might be craving a little more layering, a little more substance and a little something to prevent them being, erm, pigeon holed.
That said, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt – this is a debut album after all – and further recommend tracks like the melody-strewn You Know I Love You and title track Wait For Me.
Download: The Pigeon Detectives – WAIT FOR ME
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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WE WERE DEAD BEFORE THE SHIP EVEN SANK – Modest Mouse
Much has been made of the fact that the Mouse (The Mice?) have been forerunners in the move of so-called 'indie' into the mainstream arena, having scored a very palpable major label hit with Float On from 2004’s Good News For People Who Like Bad News, after ten years of cult-status. Yet maybe the fuss should be about how Isaac Brock’s band of merry men managed this without tarnishing their credentials. We Were Dead… shows everyone how to do it. It’s wonderfully mangled and yet massively accomplished at the same time. Some trick.
With serial collaborator Johnny Marr, onboard to add a touch of jangly Mancunian magic to the Issaquah band, the rough edges of MM’s earlier indie racket have been smoothed to a chart-friendly sheen. This often involves the current trend of cramming in as much as possible; brass sections, accordions, massed backing vocals etc. But this rodent wins over the rest of the ratpack by dint of vertiginous arrangements and an irrepressible bounce.
There are still issues surrounding Brock’s voice. His adopted shout/squeal/growl/rant is an acquired taste that is often at odds with the lush surroundings, but the amusingly wry lyrics and plainly hummable tunes mean that We Were…should yield at least a couple of chart-worrying singles. First single, ‘’Dashboard’’, is a fine example of this. All Talking Heads stuttering guitars, over-excited vocals and yet still with an eye towards the more avant garde end of contemporary math-rock. Even bringing to mind current cutting edge darlings, Battles.
James Mercer of the Shins, another band to push maverick tendencies back towards the mainstream, turns up top harmonise on three tracks; notably the edgy and witty “We’ve Got Everything” which even manages to sound like 80s-period Yes in places. Again it’s a remarkable balancing act that manages to simultaneously take chances while daring you to sing along. It’s a breathtakingly audacious ruse, and works on about 70 percent of this glittering, slightly surreal album. This is the Mouse that roars…
Download: Modest Mouse – WE WERE DEAD BEFORE THE SHIP EVEN SANK
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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WRITER’S BLOCK – Peter Bjorn And John
Writer's Block's sonic textures demand attention: odd synths, overdriven bass, dreamy harmonies, rolling drums, pink streaks of guitar noise, or a foot tapping in soft focus. But ultimately, the album is just as notable for the way it captures both the electric first moments of a deep relationship and the bleary aftermath of post-breakup malaise. The infectious, lazily whistled hook and playful bongo drums of first single "Young Folks" are immediately inviting, but the song's second layer, the coy chemistry between Peter Morén and ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman, adds depth, as the song's two hopeful strangers discover each other by chance: "All we care about is talking/ Talking only me and you."
As an album, Writer's Block shares these new lovers' singular focus. "Paris 2004" is a classical guitar-tinged traveler's ballad; "Start to Melt" flickers with amazed adoration; and "Objects of My Affection" combines the dramatic flair of an uncharacteristically upbeat Morrissey with the nasal vocals and ringing acoustic guitars of a post-Loveless "Like a Rolling Stone".
Amid the simplistic percussion and glassy chorus of "Amsterdam", Bjorn Yttling mopes over his loneliness during a lover's vacation, before John Erikkson's starry-eyed "Up Against the Wall" pictures a relationship at the precipice. "It's almost that I wish we hadn't met at all," sings Erikkson against a crystalline rhythm that could pack a John Hughes prom.
And at last, Yttling's big-screen "Roll the Credits" pictures an escape, but as usual on Writer's Block, the romance fills the frame: "It's between me and her now/ Can't separate at all/ Let's put the cards back in the sleeve." Only droning closer "Poor Cow" kills the mood, like the George Harrison sitar song contrarians might revisit when the rest of the album grows overly familiar.
If lyric poetry is, as Czech novelist Milan Kundera wrote, "the most exemplary incarnation of man dazzled by his own soul and the desire to make it heard," surely the pop song is the highest incarnation of all-consuming love and its fundamental need to be shared. Writer's Block, indeed.
Download: Peter Bjorn And John – WRITER’S BLOCK
(available for 7 days from date of post)
