Stanley Odd appeared towards the end of 2009 with an excellent single entitled ‘The Numbness’, which has been followed up by one almost equally as good entitled ‘Think Of A Number.’ Whilst there will be those who sneer at the idea o
f a scottish hip-hop act as being an oxymoron, the joke’s on them, because this is a genuinely fresh and exciting album.
Scotland’s had a hip-hop scene, it’s just that it’s underground, and by definition that means out of sight (or hearing range) to many people. But what Stanley Odd have remembered is that Hip-Hop grew out of both a party scene and social consciousness and this album genuinely keeps it real. Rapper Solareye raps in his own Edinburgh accent, and that means sounding scottish and not like he’s convinced he’s from LA, like some idiotic teenager aping Ali G without ever getting the joke. The press release remarks that Oddio is for those people that get tongue-tied talking to girls… those for whom fashion sense is an oxymoron and anyone who prefers literary figures to viewing figures. Good. This is hip-hop on a par with the socially conscious likes of Jurassic 5; Michael Franti;as far back as Gil Scott-Heron, and with a pop sensibility on its’ own terms, that sneers at the likes of bling and gets on with living.
I’ve yet to see them live, but this album’s just so much fun that that surely cannot remain the case for long. Get your ears around this collection o
f songs. Scottish Hip-Hop is about to go overground, and those laughing are about to have the smiles wiped off their silly faces. Bring it on -and here’s to Young Fathers too…
Over the last week, I’ve totally fallen for a band from Glasgow called French Wives. This five piece have released two awesome singles so far -‘Hallowe’en’/’Dogfight’ last October and this month they have issued their second ‘Me Vs. Me.’
As yet they are unsigned, but on the strength of their two singles, this surely won’t be the case for very long. They have several gigs lined up on their myspace page, and appearances at Rockness amongst other places, t
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hough nothing lined up in Edinburgh for now.
The band (Siobhan Anderson, Chris Barclay, Stuart Dougan, Scott W.D. Macpherson and Jonathyn Smith) include Sege Gainsbourg and Arcade Fire amongst their influences, as well as nearer to home bands like Camera Obscura and Belle and Sebastian. They sound like very few Glasgow bands I’ve ever heard (though if they have any musical kin I reckon it’s the mighty Fear The Fives). They sound European, in the same way that Broken Records sound European, though paardoxically I don’t think they sound much like Broken Records. I like to think they’ll appeal to people who like The Last Battle, burnit Island and t
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he aforementioned Broken Records.
Make up your own mind -and please go and pay for the singles if you like this (three awesome unreleased tracks on their myspace too!):
Still really loving The Drums’ stuff…and in order to try and recapture the summer (which disappeared today in Scotland), get your ears round this Saint Etienne remix:
Yay! those loveable hair-brained screamers, the Melvins, who recently celebrated twenty-five years together, are back with their twentieth album, The Bride Screamed Murder. This is the follow-up to 2008’s awesome Nude With Boots.This is out on June 7 (June 1, if you live in North America).
Two tracks are doing the rounds from this album -which, even if you have never heard them, you have probably rightly guessed, do not sound like Lady Gaga or Enya. The album’s opener ‘The Water Glass’ starts off maybe like you’d expect it to, then goes delightfully different about the two minute mark. The other track is the heavier than heaven second track
How do you write objectively about an album by your favourite band ever, that’s your second favourite album ever, that you feel is pretty bloody amazing? Well, yes, this is going to be a rave review, so if you don’t care for the band and/or the album, this is not going to change your mind. But given that this week the no.1 album in the UK is the re-issued Exile On Main Street from the Rolling Stones, re-issues seem to be making the news.
But dammit, this is how a re-issue ought to be put together. Having fallen from favour in the nineties, The Cure reached a new stage in the last decade where acts as diverse as Mogwai, Razorlight and The Rapture declared them an influence, where they were seen as godfathers of post-punk and continued to record new albums. Granted, these tend to be about four years apart (and I would love to see the
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, but given that Robert Smith is now fifty-one, slack should be cut.
This was the Cure’s eighth album back in 1989 (it’s ironic that at around £12 for a triple CD that’s quite possibly what many people would have paid for a copy of the album on CD then, and conceivably more) and many have considered it to be The Cure’s finest. In time Smith has considered it to be part of a trilogy with 1982’s Pornography and 2000’s Bloodflowers. (When I heard the latter on its’ release ten years ago, I really assumed that was their grand finale, and I’m delighted that’s not proved to be the case). It was a commercial and critical success and provided the band with their highest charting singles so far -‘Lullaby’ reaching no.5 in the UK, and ‘Lovesong’ reaching no.2 in the US.
Yes, it’s dark in many places, but it’s epic and sublime. Bizarrely, given that the original version omitted two tracks on the vinyl ‘Last Dance’ and ‘Homesick’ it’s one of the very few albums I would prefer to have on CD than vinyl (though I own both, surprise, surprise). What the re-issue has is not only the original album remastered, but a CD of genuine rarities (not b-sides but never before released versions of tracks and demos of the b-sides) and a third CD, entitled Entreat Plus
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. Entreat was originally an eight track album of live performances at Wembley Arena in the summer of 1989 on the Prayer tour which accompanied the release of the album. This has now been expanded to feature all twelve album tracks from the album in order.
Is this obssessive? Well, maybe, but the fact is that the deluxe editions are genuinely produced for those who consider themselves fans rather than someone who’s just buying the album because they like one or two tracks from it (and in this age of iTunes etc.. that’s got to be becoming a progressively rarer occurence). The sleeve notes are well put together and provide insights into the album that I wasn’t aware of; including that Lol Tolhurst did make more of a contribution to the album than often given credit for (though he left after hearing the playback), how a fire nearly destroyed all of Smith’s lyrics on the first night at the studio and how the record company thought it was commercial suicide.
l album still thrills from the wind-chime like opening of ‘Plainsong’ to the dying harmonium coda on ‘Untitled.’ This is a band firing on all cylinders, producing their masterpiece. And the minisite they have put together for this re-issue is truly phenomenal. And some o
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f the greatest lyrics Smith has ever written.
21 years on, this still packs a truly emotional punch.
*****
The re-issue of Disintegration is out now on Fiction.
Swimmer One first appeared on the radar around seven years ago with the release of two excellent EPs entitled We Just Make Music For Ourselves and Come On, Let’s Go!. Their debut album The Regional Variations was released in 2007, and around that time they became the first band I ever interviewed for this blog.
Now here’s time for an honest confession: I liked the debut album, gave it the thumbs up, but deep down I never quite felt it lived up to the first two EPs. But Dead Orchestras has been on the iPod since it first arrived here at 17 Seconds Records, and I think it will stay on there for quite
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some time. Now a three piece with the addition in 2007 of Laura Cameron Lewis joining Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton, this secon
them firing on all cylinders and delivering an album that may have had a long gestation period but it’s been worth it.
When I interviewed the band, they spoke of their love for the original work of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), particularly classic albums like Architecture & Morality. And in Dead Orchestras, Swimmer One have produced an album with a sound that is distinctively theirs (and which I for one think Snow Patrol have tried to rip off with their ‘Just Say Yes’ single). See like with the aforementioned OMD, the likes of the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode, and more recently, X-Lion Tamer, Swimmer One have shown that electro-pop does not have to be a slight thing, but a thing of real beauty. ‘Pop’ as oppsed to rock has seemed less s
erious, less worthy, and if it’s sought acceptance, it’s had to beg to be taken under the label of electronica or some other in the hope that it will make it okay. N
ot here. This is pure pop, in the best sense of the word.
From the opening title track, this is an album that draws you in, on its’ own terms. With songs like ‘This Club Is For Everyone, Even You’ and ‘Psychogeography’ the luscious pop within cannot fail to warm even the coldest of hearts. This is the album Swimmer One have wanted to make, and they’ve definitely delivered it.
****
Dead Orchestras is released on Biphonic on May 31.
invited to a Bar-B-Q round at Mr and Mrs. Toad’s, which we couldn’t go to, unfortunately, but it’s time for a few upbeat summery numbers here, I think.
Apart from the whinging about the taxman taking all his money (The Beatles spoil Revolver ever so slightly by whining about this, although otherwise it’s the
ienne ‘Only Love Can break Your Heart; Aztec camera ‘Somewhere In My Heart’; ‘Shanice -‘I Love Your Smile’ and ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’ by Roy Ayers. Obviously…
The Wire magazine remains the greatest print music magazine out there as far as I’m concerned, doing the job that lesser magazines can only dream of.
This month’s issue features someone I hadn’t come across before on the cover (see, when was the last time you could say that about Q or Mojo or NME? Exactly), a german artist by the name of Felix Kubin. I’m about to begin investigating his back catalogue but as I do, I have to share with you the bizarre and wonderful cover he did of Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello.’
Now I don’t know about you but I find the original turgid and bland, and the video bordering on the crass. But by the simple expedient of changing ‘you’ to ‘I’ in the song it becomes an excellent idea song about alienation. And musically it makes the Schneider TM’s take on The Smiths ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ seem tame by comparison…
Astral Planes -‘Sit Down Child’ (Say Dirty/Lucky Number Nine)
…so, anyway.
A few weeks ago I was DJing at PinUps in Glasgow and then sat drinking with Matt and Billy from the Dirty Cuts (as you do). At some point during the night, I vaguely remember Matt telling me that the Paper Planes had changed their name, which lead to some stupid trivia comment from me about how Sleeper used to be called Surrender Dorothy, until they discovered there were lots of bands with that name, and I used to have a crush on Louise Wener fifteen years ago…and forgot what and why Paper Planes had changed their name and what to.
Anyway. Within a few days, those rather lovely folk at Say Dirty/Lucky Number Nine have sent me a copy of the latest EP from Paper Planes, and it transpires they’re now called Astral Planes. Whilst I’m not sure about the name, I am however very much convinced about this six track EP, and that this is a band who are going places.
Last year’s debut single ‘Doris Day’ -with it’s catchy chant of ‘How Absurd! How Obscene!’ reduced
the impression of a band who did an excellent line in scots garage meets dirty US Country. Well, they do…but they have got so many other tricks up their sleeve. Follow-up single ‘the Sway’ isn’t here but its’ superior AA ‘disconnected I Know’ is- and shows that they can do classic pop, to
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o.
There’s six tracks here, and seventeen minutes of music. The opening two seconds of opening track ‘Shut the Door’ wrongfoot you,
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in a brilliant way, rather like that scene from Carrie gets you every time. I’ve played this EP several times today, and I want to hear it again.
Awesome.
****1/2
Sit Down Child is released on June 14 on Say Dirty/Lucky Number Nine. The two singles ‘Doris Day’ and ‘Sway’ are available on download (credited to Paper Planes).
Tomorrow -May 18 – marks thirty years since the death of Ian Curtis, frontman of Joy Division. As has been documented numerous times, he died by his own hand at his Macclesfield home, aged just twenty-three.
Whilst there are unquestionably aspects of his life that make me
uncomfortable (the fact he voted Tory, his treatment of his wife Deborah, to name but two), he was an unquestionably talented lyricist and performer. ‘Why is the bedroom so cold?’/You turned away on your side?’ seemed like someone had read
my diary many years ago, on more than one occasion. His influence on the indie/alternative scene and all it spawned is undeniable; but The Cure and U2 took notes and set out to take his musical vision out of the dank clubs and onto the world’s stadia. Curtis was the inspiration behind The Crow comic and later film (with a few notes to Robert Smith and Peter Murphy, I think!) ‘Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders,’ sang Curtis on ‘Decades,’ the closing track on their second and final album, Closer.
I was only three when he died; but just as kids I taught idolised Kurt Cobain, so the music of Joy Division’s brief career, burned so very, very brightly. Just as the lyric in Nirvana’s ‘Come As you Are’ ‘Well, I swear that I don’t have a gun’ was unbearably poignant when Cobain killed himself, so Curtis’ ‘New Dawn Fades’ with its’ icy ‘A loaded gun won’t set you free…so you say’ makes you wonder whetehr it was part of a gameplan.
This is my favourite song ever. A sound that encapsulates the sound that ice makes as it forms on water. Possibly.
As I get older, perhaps I find the way in which a young, tragic death is sold as a romantic ideal increasingly ridiculous; at best naive, at worst crass. But let’s say goodbye to the Cult of Ian Curtis: Young, Tragic Suicide and treasure him as the lyrical genius he so clearly was.
