A Distorted Reality.

I’m serialising a short story called ‘Light.’ on here.

I hope that it is enjoyed.

This song rocks so goddamn hard!!! I love the worst case scenario imagery, like a Palanhuik book. Unflinchingly cynical. This is one of those songs that you want to listen to when the bombs are being dropped and you’ve pissed off all your loved ones and it’s just you, a hooker and some good pills.

Best description of Jaguar Love’s Videotape Seascape. Ever.

Los Campesinos! MySpace

Caustic, hyperliterate, aggressive twee pop. Seriously, even the concept is wonderful: I doubt that there could be ill-executed record of this central ideal, but Los Campesinos! really have made extended metaphor in song their hallmark. Their second album of 2008 (God bless their punk-esque recording ethic) sees a happy return for their 7-piece treble-heavy formula. Ways to Make it Through the Wall starts We are Beautiful, We are Doomed with no build-up: it’s straight into the addictive twee demonstrated on Hold On Now, Youngster…: synthesisers and guitars play over one another with a care-free air, in contrast to the serious nature of the lyrics: the song is a tale of fleeting youth executed in great style; the lyrics ‘We learn together over time that tolerance is more appealing in theory than in practice. I identify my star sign by asking which is least compatible with yours‘ showing that their edge for Eddie Argos-esque wry witticisms has not been lost in the seven months since their last effort. The male-female vocal alternation is once again out in full force, with all of the effect that it ever had. Miserabilia is a step-down in tempo from Ways to Make it Through the Wall, and shows off the more considered, more serious side of the Campesinos!’ (seriously, try to punctuate that) music. The high wails of the guitar throughout the song give rise to a chant of ‘Shout at the world because the world doesn’t love you!‘ near the end, chanted in a manner bordering on the anthemic.

The title track is, simply, a joy. The mids of synthesisers, bass of guitars and highs of violins combine to form a texture best described as ‘luscious’ - thick, but not overly dense. A new vocal idea is explored here for the Campesinos!: Gareth screams the line ‘I hope my heart goes first‘ in such a vehement manner opposed to his usual pseudo-sprechgesang (especially in light of his prior monologue of ‘I taught myself the only way to get along in love is to like the other slightly less than you get in return. I keep feeling like I’m being under cut‘ in a voice of great delicacy) is undeniably stirring. Between An Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky is an instrumental track; and one demonstrative of the creative and instrumental prowess which the band possesses: it would not be out of place on a Jesu album, or a newer Envy release, for that matter. It’s completely possible that title is somewhat of an homage to Explosions in the Sky, and the music therein would make it one which that band would be more than happy with, I should think.

You’ll Need Those Fingers For Crossing is a return to the playful nature of the Campesinos!’ music. Their envisioning on a ’soft-porn end of the universe’ is delightful merely in terms of the imagery. The glockenspiel makes a more than welcome comeback to their music and is in good company amidst overdriven guitars. The chorus is nothing short of rousing and the last instrumental minute and a half is a wonderful foray into the realms of guitar noise. It’s Never That Easy Though, Is It? is a tale of some sort of twisted love told amongst a duck-like synthesiser, soaring violins and that unique Campesinos! guitar tone. Love as a medium of class war; the mutual visual experience of viewing pictures of dead pets and relatives; and the unavoidable debate over love for music or a woman experienced by every snob is the Campesinos!’ concept of love, it would seem.

The End of the Asterisk is the height of their ascerbicism, and that is no bad thing: assailing someone as a ‘waste of time’, a ‘tragedy’ and describing their self-deprecation as ’spot-on’ is so miraculously direct. The muted strumming connecting each phrase of each verse is basic but oh-so effective. Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1 is an elaboration upon their previously stated twee artistry: unrelenting treble with esoteric lyrical focuses. Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time is a sweeping, solemn song dedicated to a lost love; complete with the hyperbole inherent therein: ‘the way you look could seriously make nature dysmorphic‘ being a personal favourite. All Your Keyfabe Friends shows everything that makes Los Campesinos! great: the multi-instrumentalism, the wit and the poetry, and it really is a great way to finish an album.

We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed should be an example to bands within the niche of Los Campesinos!: it’s an album which shows progression whilst sticking with everything appealing about yourselves. The slower songs’ inconsistencies of old have been ironed out here to great effect; the result of which is a far better rounded album.

Google, you are king.

Seriously, this is why I love the long lease given to Google developers: things that you’d never usually think of integrating come through.

This, kind reader, is beyond overdue: I have long been enamoured by the music of the Leicester-based Maybeshewill, and this album has been available for rather a long time now, and it’s gotten a lot of positive press from media outlets far greater in scope than this one. However, this time has done very little to dull my passions for this masterful piece of music artistry, and so this will be written and published, regardless of it being akin to our little fish playing in the realms of the sharks and whales.

There is something beautiful about bands which can (at least) claim to have a diverse range of influences, no matter how far from the truth that statement may be; and with Maybeshewill, I’m not even sure if ‘varied’ is a strong enough word to define their vast array of musical tastes. They draw parallels between the aggressive likes of Envy, Botch and Isis and the more laid-back likes of Radiohead and the Postal Service. On paper alone, this combination of influences meshed together may seem like an effort fraught with an inherent element of overambition, if not sheer impracticality; but in its practice, it is the best elements of all of the above in a package of divine execution and wonderfully displayed musicianship.

Ixnay on the Autoplay starts the album in a relaxed, synth-y manner reminiscent of Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia: it’s one minute, forty-two seconds of keyboard work, leading into a pattern of a synthesised drumbeat. Seraphim and Cherubim, our track two, practically demolishes any predictions made as to the direction of the album to come from Ixnay through its immediate change to ‘real’ drums and a treble-heavy tremolo-picked guitar part screaming of Red Sparowes; as well as a later, heavier guitar riff being a passing nod to certain members of that band’s previous incarnation in Isis. Instrumentation remains tight, with keys, guitar, drums and whatever other synthesised sounds that they may be using blending, intertwining and supporting one another to produce a rich texture.

The Paris Hilton sex tape is thoroughly disappointing; Maybeshewill’s The Paris Hilton Sex Tape, however is a musical tour de force, with Mineral-esque hypnotic trebly guitar riffs paving the way for chugging basslines and guitar chord progressions. The drumming ability of the band is plainly demonstrated through the reduction of the song from full-band to mere drum and bass skeleton at around a minute into the song. Once again, keys compliment pounding guitar riffs in a manner incomprehensible but still amazingly simple, akin to most human expression: this is a perfect example of the emotion which can be expressed through instrumentation alone, without the pained whinings of a vocalist over it. I’m in Awe, Amadeus is a showcase of drumming ability from its start, with the fast-paced playing accompanying an endlessly falling-and-rising guitar line to the introduction of a key solo and then a more rhythmic guitar line.

We Called for An Ambulance but A Fire Engine Came demonstrates the band’s more post-metal side, with acute guitar highs meeting with obtuse guitar lows to form an all-around accessible outcome. After around a minute, this initial energy of chugging guitars and pounding drums descends into a sustained guitar chord gently fading and a key and synthesiser dream-like sequence. It’s ethereal beauty in simplicity is interrupted shortly after by a more electronic drumbeat and that wonderful rhythm guitar tone them seem to have created for themselves. Heartflusters is the first showing of the band’s vocal intentions, and it has to be said that they aren’t amongst the best of all bands: unfortunately, it does seem whiny above the delicate (and oh-so delicious) synth beats below. In fact, at three minutes in, there is a godly breakdown into a glitchy drumbeat, the likes of which I have not seen demonstrated better by even the venerable 65daysofstatic.

C.N.T.R.C.K.T is an immediate, bouncy, energy filled track which plods along by sheer virtue of its own will, it would seem from its insistent rhythm. He Films The Clouds Pt. 2 could be used as a definition for the concept of mixing delicacy with beats which could only be described well as either ‘tasty’ or ‘harsh’. Piano and strings meet with the technical drumming which has underpinned so much of this album so far in a manner bordering upon the symbiotic. The vocals which come later on in this track are wonderful, especially compared to the disappointment of those earlier, given their build up to that point. From the sole female voice to the full chant over that wonderful glitchy drum sound, the vocals are well balance and well executed in terms of tone and texture.

Not for Want of Trying, as well as being the title track, is the only song on the album I can even venture at the concept behind: the sampling of the 1976 film Network points at an acute socioeconomic awareness: Maybeshewill knows about our global recession. Musically, it is demonstrative of their dichotomic, loud-soft dynamic usage of their keys and guitars separately and is a constant ascent and descent rollercoaster of musical amazement. Takotsubo rounds the album off quite nicely much in the way that it started: delicacy once again is the order here.

This band is a revelation for the West Midlands area: they experiment with sounds that other local bands seem to be afraid to. We have glitching, chanting and piano solos all one album, and that is an achievement sofar as demonstration of diversity in music is concerned. It’s a wonderful combination of the best elements of post-rock (like Envy’s Chain Wandering Deeply), experimental electronic music (just think Aphex Twin) and even hardcore in some of the chord progressions and harmonic usage (think pageninetynine). All in all, this album demonstrates music visionaries in the early stages of what I hope to be a long career. If the sound can evolve from the originality which it already displays, I can see no upper bound for the potential of this band.

I hate how the more prevalent local scenes develop. You have one band which does something semi-original, and then you get the emulating hoards who will follow objectivelessly: they just want the benefit of the peer validation of being part of this sprawling ‘community’ of the bands of said scene. Innovation dies off and you get a group bouncing ideas only off of one another. External influence becomes a taboo: and ‘us and them’ attitude is bred.
This is why I love the idea of Stella Dawes. It takes strength of character in a group of individuals to go off from our fair city’s current largest scene of the pseudo-indie/pseudo-pop ‘creatives’ following in the footsteps laid out by the likes of Editors and do something so distant from this prevailing mood. Thick distortion, chugging riffs and harmonics which should sound awful find their homes here in contrast to the almost expected treble-loaded tremolo that has become the order of the day: it’s for this reason that it is fitting that ‘Contrasts’ is the album title. I must say, before the true meat of the review is started, that the packaging of the album was top-notch and probably would have put me in a mood good enough to enjoy any music, but in the interests of journalistic professional conduct, I put it to one side and didn’t listen to the album for a couple of hours: just long enough for me to get over the excitement which, essentially, four pieces of cardboard had brought into my day.
Mouth starts the album with fifty-six seconds of noise: a simple but effective introduction of the mood of the music to come. Happy Ever Afternoon rises from the ashes of this noise introduction with an almost unrelenting ferocity: the immediacy of pageninetynine is meshed with the sheer brutality of Orchid to produce a post-apocalyptic soundscape. Even in its quiet parts, this song is incapable of subtlety: its production is raw, with vocal falterings left in and feedback adding to, rather than detracting from, the overall texture of the track. The refrain of ‘more beautiful for tomorrow’ is guttural and strained in its execution and it adds true character to the song: this isn’t art, it’s a true emotional outpouring. The lyrics in other places border upon the divinely socially conscious: ‘We polish shit but, like it or not, nobody here is perfection, but we’re coming close’ is a blatant nod towards the misled interpretation that perfection is achievable, if at all desirable.
With Dichotomy, I was expecting a simple half-half quiet-loud dynamic, but it would appear that I project song titles onto the content of songs a little too much. The song gradually builds up for a minute, and then ascends into chaos with sonic bombasticity of the most endearing kind, and unparalleled by all that I can think of with the possible exception of Russian Circles. Distorted vocals are experimented with here to great effect: it’s not about the words, per se, but more about the position and role of vocals in the song. This distorted sequence serves to fill the void left by the descent of the guitars into a relative quietness and cleanliness. Shifting dynamics and textures are used on Dichotomy to produce a very unique and identifiable sound.
Investment Intercourse: A Deposit is the most conventional track so far on the album, showing nods towards the likes of Norma Jean through its initial minimalist instrumentation and then full-band blowout. Cowboys Become Folk Heroes would be enamoured by the vocals on display here: screams fluctuating in and out of the ’screaming’ band of singing and into the standard bounds of conventional ’singing’: this just adds to the sincerity of the music. Nothing is forced: nothing has been completely and utterly bastardised in ProTools. This is honest music. Everything Happens to Eeyore starts off with a calm, almost freeform jazz aesthetic (reminiscent of a couple of tracks from I Would Set Myself on Fire for You’s Believes in Patterns), but soon reaches the climax of churning guitars with the almost overbearing cataclysmic drumming drilling the pictures of their artistic vision into your head.
Gut is another exercise in instrumental experimentation from Stella Dawes: the guitar tone is similar to that of an ’80s Metro struggling to turn over. This gradually fades out and becomes the noise of a solitary detuned guitar. It’s yet another wonderful foray into the realms of noise as an art form. Investment Intercourse: A Return follows on from the drum outro of Gut but soon finds its own place with the introduction of an infectious lead part over it, with bass joining in later. This is a change from the generally ‘hardcore’ music pursued thus far, and shows a leaning towards the realms of post-rock. It’s a nice break in the middle of the album to cool down a little: angry, angry music is prone to make one angry.
Track eight is Sleep is for the Week, a progressive post-rockesque romp starting with a simple plucked 2-note guitar line leading into a more complex multifaceted full-band performance. It climaxes in a manner which could well be considered both ‘epic’ and ‘brutal’, both in the ironic and non-ironic senses. Fifteen Hour Drive takes a different tack to everything on the album prior to this point: clean guitars leading into a crescendo of distortion and strained vocals. It’s almost like a laid-back Explosions in the Sky song.
When the Tiger Lost His Voice sees a plodding heaviness which somehow manages not to be dull through the latent yet apparent emotion of the vocals. Their mystical chainsaw tone is present here, replete with a background chanting which is reminiscent of Lion of the North. The Unspeakable is a straight-up hardcore song, with chants, octave chords and sequences which shouldn’t be bearable, but are through some divine musical magic. The cries of ‘Is love enough?’ can do nothing but endear the band to the listener: this is once again social commentary of the highest order.
The album ends on a raw, unprocessed high with Decay: it’s a completely unmastered track with a small spoken section at the beginning which explores their recording and musical technique quite nicely.
Overall, this album is superb: it’s intellectual hardcore. It’s brutal, yet subtle; artistic, yet emotional. It is the embodiment of the DIY ethic through its production method: all of the mastering was done internally. Listen to it. See them live. You’ll love it.

With the demise of Starve in Heaven, I felt that this deserved a repost.

James Summerfield’s MySpace

Birmingham seems to be at the forefront of a new wave of folk- and country-inspired music, with the likes of Sam Bentley, Friends of the Stars etc. coming to the favour of ourselves and other local media. And here, in James Summerfield, we could have another sign that the next ‘Birmingham sound’ is going to be closer to Saddle Creek’s current definition of the ‘Omaha sound’ than the metal of the ’80s.

The album starts with an almost painfully cliché country-esque song title in Another Day With You’s Like Torture - it just screams of the likes of I Beat My Wife to Dull the Pain mid-Western America songwriting - but (luckily) it finds its salvation in the content of the song itself. It’s a delicate number of strings, acoustic guitar, slide guitar and drums accompanied by the sort of pained, spiderweb-thin vocal delivery paralleling that of the late Elliott Smith. The lyrics are full of sweet little references to the limitations of knowledge and the transience of relationships, throwing back memories to late-era ‘everything is a ballad’ Dr. Hook. And that is quite possibly the only time that that particular comparison has been made favourably.

Heads Down and Eyes Up is a song which I can immediately love, if only for the passing theme of ‘I can’t stand theists for whom God only exists in their hours of need.’ It’s just delightful commentary on a breed worthy of hate. Again, Elliott Smith comparisons seem necessary: the delay on the voice is reminiscent of Independence Day, and works to thicken out the texture of the song in the same way, alongside the far more minimal backing of slide guitar and strings.

The third song on the album, Stuck in the Mud, is probably the most indicative of the minimalism of his music: voice and guitar. It’s a simple combination which works, especially with the contrast between the harsher highs of his vocal chords and the clean sounding mids of his accompanying guitar. Count to Ten is, simply, wonderful: soothing vocals tell the story of a stalkerish distant desire, but in terms so pure. Chinese food, independent films, cashews and cheap wine are truly the more base components of a successful relationship. The sudden-onset swell of the instruments at the end of the song at the point of ‘I’m thinking of you even though we have not met’ seems so earnest that the song cannot be construed as anything but earnest by anything possessing a heart. The descent into a whisper from this just compounds the effect. The subsequent instrumental of Jelly Bones demonstrates the technical proficiency of James quite well.

Getting thoroughly hammered because of a loved one: it’s so passé, but so wonderfully adaptable to music. What’s on Your Mind shows a struggle between whiskey and wine brought on by the perceived distance of another, and its wonderfully executed with vocals which for the first time on the album seem strained, and it’s a strain of a most appealing nature. It’s an emotional strain. It’s genuine. Delusions of adequacy and grandeur are also great concepts for songs, and Films tackles this, again, with great aplomb. The vocals and guitar mesh to form a whole, rather than just being the sum of two parts.

A Little Time’s guitar part is wonderfully playful, and it’s an infectious riff. It could be considered danceable, as far as that term is usable in country. I’d be a Helpless Friend is a song, once again, of James Summerfield’s more minimalist side: guitar plucking accompanied by slide and the most gentle of percussion. At 1:59, it’s a nice break from the rest of the album.

Once is a sad song, simple as: the debate of love as a once in a lifetime experience versus a constant one just doesn’t lend itself to jolly music. His melancholy is an enjoyable one, though: the vibrato on the vocals becomes gradually more and more unrestrained as the song goes on, just giving the feeling that the performer is close to tears. It’s wonderful.

9 Lives and Paper Bags are a stylistic departure from what was the formula laid down up to now. 9 Lives sees the introduction of clean electric guitars and a far more staccato vocal style. Paper Bags, on the other hand, is the polar opposite to this. The song brings with it a delightfully fragile piano intro and a gentle climb to full instrumentation. The only lyrics in this song, which are sung towards the end, serve as a closing to this album wonderfully: it’s a synoptic account of the themes of the entire album.

I must say that this album is, in a little way, a little hackneyed, but only in a thematic sense; and I’m not quite sure as to how bad of a thing that is. Sure, the songs are about love, about life, about the day-to-day: and all of that has been done before ad inifitum. But who cares? These themes cut to the very core of the human condition.

It’s out in August. Buy it.

Commercially Inviable Records, the record label at the helm of what I see as the folk revolution in Birmingham, are really pressing the concept of ‘art for art’s sake’, and I can truly respect that. I hope that their lineup grows exponentially with a maintenance of quality.

See, see, this is what I need. I need to know secrets and have secrets and keep secrets. I need to be confided in.

I am currently in love with Vox.

Yes, Ben Marwood is yet another British singer-songwriter; yes, Ben Marwood is yet another pretty boy who can play guitar; and yes, Ben Marwood does sell his records in HMV (call me an indie snob, I do not care). All of this perceived negativity, however, is mere prejudice and doesn’t even hold up to the most brief of listens: even though the voices of his influences can be heard, he intermingles their ideas with those of his own to form a very cohesive individual voice. Question Marks opens with a marvellous plucked guitar sequence which underpins the song to its end, and a wonderful progression it is: the song is packed with what I can only see as playful snipes at Sam Duckworth of Get Cape fame - it seems that Ben isn’t too keen on his contemporary’s socioeconomic commentary, as demonstrated by the lyrics ‘I will not preach revolution, ’cause I’m not as dumb as to think that I have the solution‘, as well as his insistence upon telling us how ‘Get Cape. Wear Cape. stole [his] sound‘. Five Little Secrets is something altogether more dark: a more sombre but still endearing acoustic guitar line forms the non-vocal backbone of the song; whilst the raspy, almost aggressive vocals of Ben keep the song chugging along with a renewed momentum with each exhalation. I Know What I Did Last Summer carries on this vocal theme: it’s a piano-introduced denouncement of the poor little rich girl as venomous as any that I’ve ever heard before: not even the tra-la-la-ing can detract from the vehemence of his voice in the lines ‘every time you start your flowery speech, I expect to hear Death Cab start three feet behind me‘ and ‘it feels like you’re living The fucking OC’. Even in the midst of this, a certain frailty which could only be described as ‘cute’ is exposed; his ascension into the higher pitches accentuates the greatest asset of his music: honesty.

Track four, Heathens, sees more venom being spat: seemingly this time over transient Christians and faith merely to spite others. Once again, the Marwood’s gritty voice over simple, bright acoustic guitar dichotomy is on display in the most apparent example of its implementation yet. This fury in Ben’s voice spills over into Claire: a song clearly of a tale of a jilted liar, and as such, a wonderful place for the proliferation of his growl. In spite of his previous admonishment of the we-can-fix-the-world attitudes of the likes of Duckworth, Fake It sees demonstration of anger over the lack of difference perceived by some between him and the boy and girl bands so prolific on the television. This is righteous anger: this is the good kind of hypocrisy. Like it or Not finishes the album on a high note: the bitterness inherent in his voice seems to be gone, and the major key of the music is not deceptive as it had been previously.

To conclude: it’s £4.99 from HMV. It’s amazing. Buy it.

Envy’s MySpace
Thursday’s MySpace

To say that I’d been waiting for this with baited breath would be an understatement: Envy are simply brilliant and Thursday have always held some favour with me, even through the rocky A City By The Light Divided years. Spine-chilling album artwork and a seven-track listing of names far too long to be functional led me to a glorious conclusion: this was to be, on paper if nothing else, something new for Thursday and something typical of Envy.

As He Climbed the Dark Mountain confirms any thoughts of a new outlook on the part of Thursday: faced-paced, technical riffing intertwined with expeditious drumming makes Rickly’s trademark rasp stand out more than ever. It’s raspy again: it seems that they’ve left behind the post-production excesses of their most recent work and it really is better for it. Track two of Thursday’s four is the somewhat more experimental In Silence. With an introduction smacking of the likes of Jesu with its synthesiser-meets-droning-ambiance-of-guitars dynamic. This is like no other Thursday song released before: it’s fully instrumental and borders upon the definition of musically ‘epic’. It wondrously leads from the aforementioned droning amidst synthesisers into a piano chord-bashing exercise, only to rise again to the heights of a tremulous soundscape almost aping the work of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. An Absurd and Unrealistic Dream of Peace begins hauntingly: barely audible piano and guitars raise hairs which are only to be flattened seconds later by the violent progression of distorted guitar chords to come. Once again fast and technical, the instrumental work here is beyond simply ‘impressive’, it’s standard-setting for bands within Thursday’s peer group. Appeared and Was Gone is another instrumental song, this time with piano leading a march into the deepest of electronic noise experimentation: we climax with nothing short of sonic cataclysm. This is not typical Thursday: this is an evolved, matured Thursday; somewhat ironically looking back to their earlier works of Waiting and Full Collapse for inspiration.

Envy’s half of the split is just as impressive. An Umbrella Fallen into Fiction is as progressive as anything by Envy: a four-minute, low-key introduction mixing electronic and ‘real’ instrumentation with the soft-spoken monologue of Tetsuya Fukagawa leading to a passionate explosion of screams amidst a background of swirling guitars. And it still works. It’s still surprising. That guttural, visceral exhalation is still as passionate as it was on Breathing and Dying in this Place. Isolation of a Light Source is more direct: the pretext of an introduction is done away with and immediacy takes its place. Divine riffs cross with incomprehensibly quick drumming to form a whole which embodies the spirit of the band’s music: technical, whilst not devoid of feeling; the anguish in Fukagawa’s voice is truly discernible. Pure Birth and Loneliness takes a step back in terms of tempo, whilst providing the same softly-spoken and tremolo picked delights of Japanese rock, as well as the throat-exercises so resplendently executed. Nothing is an excess: it’s all essential, from the scream-talk dichotomy to the soft-hard ascensions of instrumentation.

This split is the best that I have heard all year, no mistake to be made about it. Through this collaboration, Thursday really have gone back to their better days, and Envy remain as consistent as they always have been. It’s thirty-three minutes of stylistic exploration by both parties, and it really shows: it’s something different from both bands’ back catalogue, and a will to play around with ideas surely only has positive connotations for the futures of both of these bands.