This arrived in the inbox a few days ago. Released today, I held back on publishing until it was actually released.
Jamie Bacon originally hails from Wick in the north of Scotland. Now based in the Central Belt (he doesn’t specify), this is a song which draws on rock and folk, with that strand of Scots melancholy that is found in the likes of Frightened Rabbit, early Biffy Clyro, Idlewild and R.M. Hubbert. The song talks of the issue of feeling isolated living so far north, and the feeling of being a prisoner in your hometown. A mighty fine song, in fact.
This is a live version of the track, released through Meraki records. You can stream it on all usual services, including bandcamp and buy it. (For the record, and to support the cause, I did.)
It’s a privilege writing a blog and getting so many submissions, but there are occasions when I get irritated about the sense of entitlement from some who seem to think they have a God-given right to have their entire roster reviewed in detail before you so much as pick up your child from school or feed the cat.
So it was quite touching to have an email from California from one Steven Wesley Guiles, who promised not to send any follow-ups and acknowledged he felt he was sending an email into the void.
Because ‘Misunderstanding’ is absolutely lovely. It has echoes of Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver, and also reminds me a bit of Death Cab For Cutie and The Decemberists. Also the lyric video reminds me of that Great American Roadtrip I have yet to take (money being perhaps the biggest factor).
His third album Hallelujah Heartbreak came out last month and you can check it out via his bandcamp here. Seriously, you should, it’s lovely stuff.
4AD continue to be one of the most consistently brilliant independent labels, nearly forty years after they were founded. A mere couple of days after new music from The Breeders (see below), Meg Remy (AKA U.S. Girls) has released her new subversively pop tune ‘Mad As Hell’ – and it’s absolutely fabulous.
The press release – accurately – describes it as a ‘candy-coated Trojan horse for her powerful call to action for pacifism and impassioned critique of military spending.’ Protest music takes many forms – not least with the video. Directed by Remy with Emily Pelstring, it brings together historic, patriotic and military imagery. Remy performs throughout the video duplicated in synchronized dance moves flipping off her subjects recalling backup dancers of ‘60s pop girl groups. Indeed the song sounds like an alt-pop take on an 80s take on 60s girl bands.
Struggling to make sense of that? Watch the video below. The track is taken from the follow-up to 2015’s Half Free, about which more details are set to follow…
I guess like a lot of people, my initial interest in the Foo Fighters was because Dave Grohl had been in Nirvana. I bought the debut album the week the self-titled debut came out in 1995 (if memory serves, the day before school finished for me for ever) and I’ve enjoyed them on their own terms ever since.
In the last week they’ve unveiled a new song ‘ Run’ and not only is it a fabulous song, but the video is fantastic. With a sentiment about getting old but not taking any crap that hasn’t been shown so much since Pulp‘s ‘Help The Aged’ (bloody hell, that’s 20 years old now as well), the six-minute-plus promo sees the now six-piece showing that there’s no harm to be had in rocking out, and taking no prisoners while they do it. Without wishing to give too much away, the band feature as part of a bunch of elderly miscreants who cause havoc in a church before carjacking some kids. As you do. Pipe and slippers can wait.
As the birthday cards say ‘Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional.’ Damn skipper!
Many moons ago, NME (back when it was better than the sadly-depleted freebie it is now) ran a feature on the most rock’n’roll films. A Clockwork Orange came out top.
Anthony Burgess may not have liked Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel, but it seeped deeply into popular culture. Even though it was banned in the UK for the best part of thirty years (Kubrick withdrew it), it informed so much of popular music. Blur’s video for ‘The Universal’ is an obvious reference point, but an entire book could be written about how it informed youth culture in Britain for decades afterwards (there probably has already been a book or two on this). As a teenager growing up in the early 90s it had a whole mystique attached that’s harder for a younger generation to figure out now, much of it in the fact it was so hard to see legally in the UK.
I mention this because a video popped into my inbox that’s very much informed by A Clockwork Orange. Not so much the ultraviolence, hanging out with droogs or even Beethoven but more the controversial ‘cure’ (if you have seen the film, you will understand the quotation marks). Jon Mills is the director and he has produced a great pop video.
My Pleasure is a Hull-based solo musician who has received acclaim from the likes of Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson. This track ‘I Want To Keep This Feeling Going’ is a joy, like Momus covering XTC (and I mean that as a compliment). This is taken from the EP Party Popper which is available for free (sic), you pay only P&P (see here for details).
It wasn’t my intention to stop writing the blog for 6 weeks, merely that a day or so after my last post I was taken ill with what turned out to be chronic pancreatitis and I’ve been frankly bloody exhausted. As I return to the blog, I find that updates seem to have made the blog harder to edit and I am trying to sort these out as well.
I have written a few articles for God Is In The TV in the meantime, and so I would like to point people towards my review for Michael Kiwanuka’s excellent sophomore album Love and Hate, and Frank Ocean’s utterly astonshing’s Blonde.
This was another song that arrived in my inbox that I just happened to give a spin to one morning, and found myself singing for the rest of the day.
There’s not much I can say about High Violet – whilst their name is also that of an album by The National, the four members – Smem, Ricky, Dan and Emily seem to pick up where Haim left off, a glorious take on 1980s Fleetwood Mac. This is a debut single – and while I can’t find out much more about the Australian four-piece, other than that they seem to come from Sydney and Adelaide, just take this song on its own merits. It’s bloody fabulous!
It’s probably not fair to judge a band on the basis of one track alone, but before my first play of ‘New Haircut’ by Playing House had even finished, I knew I had to feature them on the blog.
Formed just ten months ago in East London, Playing House are Mel Patman (vocals & guitar), Izzy Cox (vocals & bass) and Killian McCorley (guitar). Shortly to release their debut EP New Haircut, the first track to be released from that is the title track. To describe it as youthful is not to infer it is naive or unpolished; rather it is to say that there is an optimism and freshness in the sound, an excitement that is infectious, and like all decent pop songs, before you’ve even finished playing it, you know you want to play it again and again.
Playing House say that their name ‘comes from the idea that we are all learning how to be a grown up and the pressure to keep it all together” and their songs are full of honest observations on life, love and a fear of everything.’ On the evidence so far, they’re going to be just fine.
This is a live video of another song from the forthcoming EP ‘Grapefruit.’
This is another song from YouTube ‘Lion and the Lamb.’
For a town of roughly 20,000, Bellshill has more than punched above its weight musically: not only were Sharleen Spiteri and Sheena Easton born in the town, so too were Teenage Fanclub, BMX Bandits and the Soup Dragons formed here, and also De Rosa.
This is the band’s third album, and their first album in 7 years. Having released Mend and Prevention on the Delgados’ Chemikal Underground label, the band have moved to another Glasgow independent label, run by another of Scotland’s most acclaimed bands, in this case Mogwai’s Rock Action.
The album starts off very strongly indeed. The opening ‘Spectres’ moves from understated to anthemic and back again. It would have been easy to fill the album with tracks like this – fortunately the band and consequently the album (up to a point) are stronger for them not doing so. Second track ‘Lanes’ sees them in more frail musical territory, as if forging a link between Alasdair Roberts and Frightened Rabbit. Then ‘Chip On My Shoulder’ takes the album to someplace else, whilst continuing the theme of the album
– and it’s deservedly been another one of the tracks to do the rounds from the record.
The thing is that while there’s a beautiful Scottish melancholy running through the album, it does let go slightly of your attention from the fourth track ‘Scorr Fank Juniper’ (no, that’s not a spelling mistake) onwards until the penultimate track ‘Devils.’ The reality is that losing attention with the middle part of this album is something that happened several times with the album, not just after one play.
So, it’s good to have De Rosa back, and on the evidence if this album, they certainly have it in them to make a really strong album, and I think their style is far better served on an independent label than a major that would have most likely insisted on several facsimiles of a couple of tracks. Let’s hope that however long their fourth album takes, that they make sure it plays to all their strengths.
