Album Review: Pere Ubu

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Pere Ubu -‘Lady From Shanghai.’ (Fire)

There’s been very few bands like Pere Ubu in history (that I’ve come across), and even fewer who would really try to sound like them. Just like you wouldn’t want people to try and sing Associates songs at Karaoke (I hope you wouldn’t), so the thought of acts trying to follow them is almost uncomfortable.

It’s not one of the band’s more challenging records (I remember a colleague wincing when I made him listen to 1982’s Song Of The Bailing Man; he lasted a song and a half), but what I find so brilliant about this record is that it encapsulates the sheer otherness of the David Thomas and co. and provides a fine entry point into them, if you’ve never heard them before.

And that sound…still a take on the avant-garde meeting blues rock, so a bit Beefheartian, if you’re clutching for something. But the songs are something special, too. There’s a dark mood that’s compelling, like a 1950s B-movie at times, yet never schlocky. And it’s an album that you want to play again and again. Or you should do, if you like your music to take you someplace. ‘Musicians Are Scum’ may sound like a confrontational title-but it somehow sums up so well what PU are about.

Bizarrely, my first introduction to the band, aged eleven, was courtesy of Roland Rat, but that’s a whole other story…

****

Lady From Shanghai is out now on Fire.

Download ‘Free White’ below

Presenting…Flutes

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Miserable yet optimistic.

That’s how Flutes describe themselves. I came across the name beacuse they are on Vic Galloway’s tips for 2013. I heard the track ‘Auld Archie’ and was smitten. (Anyone who thinks these lists don’t matter – you’re wrong; I went and bought the album today because of this.)

I have not found out a great deal about the band – googling flutes produces either flute teachers or what look like links to groups who may or may not have paramilitary links going on about maintaining traditions. Hmm. They hail from Scotland originally but are now based in London, according to people I have talked to.

Looking at the album gatefield sleeve (yup, still buying vinyl in 2013!) Godfrey McFall is the singer and guitarist, with help from Robert Marshall (guitars), Andy Bruce (bass, piano) and Alex Walker (drums) amongst others…

Stream and download their debut single ‘Auld Archie’ from their self-titled album below:

This is the video for the track:

Presenting…Sex Jams

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Some band names are designed to make it easier to look for in the age of Google and Yahoo. (Reportedly that’s why Chvrches are Chvrches and not Churches.) Sex Jams are clearly not remotely interested in whether you feel comfortable looking for their name on internet search engines.

Sex Jams are straight out of Vienna’s throbbing underground DIY scene, even if that’s what the PR sheet tells me. It also tells me that the band are (drum roll please): Katie Trenk (vocals), Peter T. (bass), Wolfgang Möstl (guitar and vocals), Lukas Bauer (guitar) and Rudi Braitenthaller (drums).

They are shortly to release their new single ‘Shark Vs. Apple’ (out on January 14) (click on the link below to download), which is taken from their new album Trouble Honey. Doubtless, there will be those who will try and go on about how this is a sign that the 90s revival is here at last. I don’t give a damn about any revival, what I do hear is a young band, with energy, guts and the ability to write pop songs and make a hell of a racket. All at the same time.

So they didn’t make a tippers list for 2013? Whatever. Listen and then spread the word. You know what to do.

The Blog Sound of 2013

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A few months back, I was asked to nominate my tips for bands and artists to make it big in 2013.

Along with 48 other bloggers, the results were collated and the end results are:

1st Haim

2nd Chvrches

3rd= Savages

3rd= Pins

5th The Neighbourhood

It’s taken until this point in the evening for me to blog about this (can’t access the blog from my desk at work), so you may have seen this everywhere else over the blog. But this is what you need to know:

‘The Blog Sound poll was run by Robin Seamer from Breaking More Waves and Andy Von Pip from The Von Pip Express asking 49 UK music bloggers what emerging acts they were particularly excited about. The poll wasn’t intended to criticise the BBC’s Sound of list, but to simply represent the tastes of the voting bloggers.

The 2013 Blog Sound long list contained 7 acts that were also then revealed to be on the BBC Sound of List (AlunaGeorge, Chvrches, Haim, Laura Mvula, Palma Violets, Savages and Tom Odell) and 8 that weren’t (Curxes, Daughter, Mo, Pins, Randolph’s Leap, Rhye, Seasfire and The Neighbourhood).

In total just over 170 acts received at least 1 vote in the poll, but Haim and Chvrches were way ahead of the chasing pack when it came to the final count. Pins and Savages, tied for third place with The Neighbourhood, the second US act on the list after Haim in fifth.

Of the five most voted for acts all of them are bands and four of them have lead female vocalists. Two of the bands (Haim and The Neighbourhood) are from the US.

The winners Haim have been one of the most talked about bands of the last few months and were the second most blogged act by UK Hype Machine listed bloggers in 2012. Haim consist of three sisters from California and were originally in a band with their parents called Rockinhaim. They signed a record deal earlier in 2012 and will release their debut album in 2013. Their sound fuses elements of classic rock, r ‘n’ b and pop and they have been compared with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, TLC and Wilson Phillips.’

Of the five acts, Chvrches are the one I am most familiar with. I quite like Haim – I’ve always been upfront about my love of Fleetwood Mac, and the two tracks I have heard are pretty good. Savages produced a great single last year in ‘Husbands’ which reminds me of The Au Pairs, The Raincoats and The Slits (perhaps slightly less on the last one). Pins and the Neighbourhood I wasn’t aware of, so I can’t comment too much on them, as I would be doing so on the basis of one track apiece! They sound fine to me.

It was great to be asked to take part again, and the best of luck to the acts concerned.

The other blogs involved were:

A New Band A Day, A Pocket Full Of Seeds, All Noise, Alphabet Bands, Both Bars On, Brapscallions, Breaking More Waves, Brighton Music Blog, Details Of My Life So Far, Don’t Watch Me Dancing, Dots And Dashes, Drunken Werewolf, Eaten By Monsters, Electronic Rumors, Faded Glamour, Folly Of Youth, Flying With Anna, God Is In The TV, Harder Blogger Faster, Howl, In Love Not Limbo, Just Music That I Like, Killing Moon, Kowalskiy, Love Music : Love Life, Mudkiss, Music Broke My Bones, Music Fans Mic, Music Liberation, Music Like Dirt, My Bands Better Than Your Band, Not Many Experts, Peenko, Real Horrorshow, Scottish Fiction, Skeletory, Song By Toad, Sounds Good To Me Too, Storm’s Brewing, Sweeping The Nation, The Blue Walrus, The Electricity Club, The Mad Mackerel, The Metaphorical Boat, The Music Hoarder, The Recommender, This Must Be Pop, and Von Pip Musical Express.

Presenting…Laura Mvula

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So, there’s no shortage of lists for artists set to have 2013 as their big year. Can being on these lists be a blessing or a curse? That might depend if you are an act like Adele or one like The Bravery, both acts who have been winners of these lists. But as you’re almost certainly aware, one went massive, the other, well…

I’m really hoping that, one the basis of the tracks I have heard so far, Laura Mvula will be one of those for whom it is a blessing. Because what has been suggested to be a combination of The Blue Nile and Steely Dan is an unusual mix, but one that Mrs. Mvula (her married name) carries with flair and style.

Gospeldelia is the name The Guardian have given her music, and I think it’s rather apt. Like Amy Winehouse- who was clearly a big inspiration, she may not be a jazz singer per se, but she certainly takes a lot from Jazz.

Her debut album Sing To The Moon is out on March 4, the tracklisting is as follows:

Like The Morning Dew
Make Me Lovely
Green Garden
Can’t live with the world
Is There Anybody Out There
Father Father
That’s Alright
She
What The Weather Will Be
Sing To The Moon
Flying Without You
Diamonds

..oh, and just for the record, I wasn’t sent anything by a PR company, I like what I hear enough to want to write about it.

Update: January 7. This track has just been made available to stream:

Green Garden

Album Review: The Pictish Trail

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The Pictish Trail -‘Secret Soundz Vol. 2’ (Fence)

So, it would be terribly easy to be flippant about this release and simply state that it’s the follow-up to the Fence head honcho’s debut (hence the ‘vol.2’ bit). But that would be missing the point and doing Johnny Lynch a terrible injustice.

See, the reality is that this is really a rather beautiful and really wonderful album. Like many Scots artists, melancholy and beauty run through his work (I could reel off a list of names here, but that would be missing the point. Go and do your own research.) The term ‘folktronica’ has become derrided and sneered at -but what our hero does here on his second album is to produce an album that ably mixes, well, folk and electronica, and produces something really great. And the thing is, you can mix up styles as much as you like -but at the end of the day, it’s still important to be able to turn them into coherent songs, dammit, and this album certainly succeeds on that.

Some tracks like ‘Wait Until’ have more of a definite experimental electronic feel, while others, such as ‘Sequels’ and ‘Of Course You Exist’ are more of an investigation into how folk music might sound. And sure, this album will be poured over by Fence’s ever-growing band of devotees, and lauded and parised in Scotland -but if there’s any justice, the reach and adoration will be far further afield than that.

****

Secret Soundz Vol.2
is released by Fence on January 21.

Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year to you all, hope you had a great Christmas/New Year or whatever you like to celebrate.

Lots of new stuff coming this way in 2013, there’s been new albums dropping onto the doormat at 17 Seconds Towers and into my inbox for several weeks now, but I was busy trying to finish off working through all the stuff for 2012.

If you haven’t read them already, you can see my best tracks and best albums when you click on them thare links (say in a Pirate voice, it’s not meant to be a spelling mistake). I have also had an article published today on God Is In The TV about new albums expected in 2013.

Interestingly, having blogged about Glasgow’s Chvrches three months ago, they have now made the BBC’s Sound of 2013 poll. Check this out if you haven’t already…