OH HAI 2012. This is my first singles review of what has so far been a year rich in musical pickings, and I’m hoping we’ll see some more of that here. I’ve been listening to new releases from Cloud Nothings, Chairlift and Porcelain Raft religiously since discovering that my phone contract gives me three months of Spotify premium for free – because you shouldn’t download music illegally, kids. Although with SOPA being buried very, very deep down under some very, very long grass you might be able to get away with doing that for a while longer. But you still shouldn’t. Why not check out the menagerie of musical magnificence below, and if it’s as good as some of the music we’ve already heard this year, go buy it. Every little helps, and the economy could really do with a boost…
I mean it in the nicest possible way when I say that French/Finnish band The Dø are weird musical freaks who should get out more. With reported influences as diverse (and oddly alliterative) as Beck, Bartok and Bjork, it’s pretty hard finding a hole for this particular pigeon, but I’m going to go ahead and describe their latest single Gonna Be Sick! as GRAVEYARD FUNK-POP. There, I invented a genre. It may sound obscure, but if Pitchfork can get away with pretending that ‘Witch House’ is a real thing then the world’s your hipster oyster. The song itself is an oddity, and a fun one. Singer Olivia Merilahti is a vocal chameleon, and her encyclopaedic range of timbres and inflections is enthralling enough on its own. Those croons, growls and yelps are surrounded by a band with its own idiosyncrasies– the bass is high in the mix and playfully adventurous, while some sort of tuned percussion climbs down a minor scale with an acoustic guitar for company. All of them seem to be doing their own thing, just happy to be along for the ride. The nuance of Merilahti’s vocals and the controlled chaos of the band around her creates an atmosphere that is both tense and laid-back at the same time, and it’s all rather fun in a slightly disturbing, disordered way, like playing tag in a cemetery. Not that I’ve ever done that. Moving on…
I want you to imagine that you hate The Beatles. Obviously if you actually hated The Beatles, you wouldn’t be reading God Is In The TV because you must HATE ALL MUSIC. Anyway, imagine that you hate The Beatles so much that you want to make sure nobody ever listens to their music ever again. That’s exactly what The J-PEGS appear to be trying to with She Had Everything, the lead single from new EP ‘Hard Country’. They’ve clearly decided to write a song that sounds like the Fab Four just enough to be irreversibly associated with them in your brain, but is so crashingly uninspiring that it ruins every Beatles song you listen to after hearing it. You have to hope that The J-PEGS are doing this maliciously, because if they’re not, it’s basically the musical equivalent of those coffee cups made from recycled cardboard. They obviously know how to sound like the Beatles – the guitar riff has that Merseybeat simplicity, the vocal harmonies have the same psychedelic drone as classics like The Word and And Your Bird Can Sing, and the song bops past at just over two minutes – but it’s all so pastiche and devoid of enthusiasm that you can’t really take it seriously. They even manage to perfectly replicate the highest heights of Paul McCartney’s lyrical faceplantery with lines like ‘She had everything/She had rings n’things’. Think The Rembrandts, post-lobotomy.
Charleston are the latest dose of effortless, brooding cool to ooze out of London’s blogohypescenesphere, and by the quality of debut single Piece By Piece, the rapid growth of their following over the past few weeks should come as no surprise. Mixing trip-hop beats with singer Lily Gaskell’s sultry invocations of desire and deviance, the self-styled ‘Dark Pop’ (I still think Graveyard Funk-Pop is better) trio should be soundtracking sex scenes on ‘gritty’ Channel 4 teen dramas by summer. When Gaskell drapes her soulful moan around lines like ‘strip it back to the XX/XY’, it’s tempting to look past the chromosomes (lyrical geekery is the new black, by the way) and see a veiled reference to the obvious stylistic predecessors to this lot, The XX. From the distant, atmospheric guitar to the sparse but mildly disconcerting beat, Piece By Piece makes a strong case for cementing Charleston as next-in-line for the throne of gothy British indie. They display a mastery of their style and sound, making tricky tempo changes sound natural and using just the right amount of bleeps, clicks and squeaks to create a sonic palette that’s soft enough to absorb you, weird enough to intrigue you and teasingly restrained enough to make you excited for whatever this lot choose to do next.
Look past the dubious glam-rock intro, and new single Bruises is a musical coming-of-age for Southampton rockers Band Of Skulls. Debut album ‘Baby Darling Doll Face Honey’ was full of listenable, beefy blues-rock in the mould of The Black Keys, but didn’t get anywhere near the quality of sound, songwriting and sheer attitude that we hear on Bruises. It’s not so much a reinvention as an augmentation of their stylistic range – In the verse and chorus, the guitars and haunting harmonies of Russell Marsden and Emma Richardson recall early Radiohead and Manic Street Preachers, with a more sophisticated use of instrumentation and tone that shows a leap in musical maturity from their first album. The highlight is undoubtedly the bridge between the verse and the chorus, with enormous power-pop chords and a vocal line that may stray a little too close to The Raconteurs, but makes for a pretty invigorating dynamic shift nonetheless. The chorus lyric ‘Spread your wings to the world’ gives a good indication of where this band are going next – they’ve already appeared on the Twilight soundtrack (ignore the glittery vampire hormones, there’s some cracking stuff on there), and while some of their musical references may be a little dated, I see no reason for Band Of Skulls to do anything other than take off during 2012.
The contradictions of the lo-fi ethos are well known – the perceived authenticity that came with scratchy, distorted production was undermined when bands who had made their fortunes with glossily produced albums began churning out barely listenable scribbles of noise and feedback (Better Leave that Unspecified. R.), but it still has an appeal when you know that it sounds all grainy just because the band can’t, or won’t, pay for proper studio time. That’s certainly the case with Cardiff young ones The Red Age, who make charming, demo-quality and slightly anachronistic indie rock that sounds like The Strokes jamming with Television. In latest release Hand Over, singer Craig Stewart’s voice is obscured by what sounds like the ‘telephone’ effect from GarageBand, and the guitar tones could have Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi demanding royalties, but the delightfully catchy chorus is up there with some of the New York pioneers’ finest efforts. Hand Over is nothing new, but it’s got a messy, scampish exuberance (and a hilariously minimalist bass solo) that should help The Red Age to stand out from the crowd of young Stroke-alikes that has emerged over the past decade.
Ach, I’ll just say it: The 90s were a fantastic time for music. Sure, we had The Spice Girls, Steps and U2, but what about all that lovely alt-rock that America squirted everywhere? The past couple of years have seen a pretty unsuccessful attempt to revive the beast, with some cracking albums from Yuck, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and the recent Steve Albini-produced Cloud Nothings album ‘Attack On Memory’. All great albums which don’t seem to have spawned any kind of wider movement, but there’s life in the genre yet. Please. I’ve decided that Britain has to lead the way if we’re to give grumpy, hormonal teenagers something new to listen to when they want to blame the world for something, and we could start with the magnificent crunch of Suilven’s 657. The Wakefield quartet have gained a substantial local following with their debut self-titled EP, which splices heavy ‘90s rock with a more experimental electronic approach. Singer Tom ‘Jagger’ Buckley’s voice is the gloriously impossible spawn of Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, held aloft by coiled-spring verses and massive, muscular choruses. In those verses the vocals soar above the music, with minimalist drums and shimmering guitars running underneath, but when the chorus hits the whole band elbows in, throwing their weight about in a moshpit of bass and cymbal crashes. When the band drops out towards the end before a solo vocal thunders into a final, raucous coda, it’s as satisfying as that bit with the air-drumming from Smells Like Teen Spirit. Don’t pretend you don’t know.
Ok, so there may be a couple in there which you might not want to shell out your hard-earned cash for, but there are some great tracks as well. Record of the week has to be from Band Of Skulls, because I really did not expect that from them. Suilven get runner-up for being big and noisy, while the coveted ‘Consolation Prize For The Band I Was Probably A Bit Too Mean To’ goes to The J-PEGS, bless ‘em.
