I’m generally a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to new technologies and web tools. I still don’t see the point of Twitter (yet I feel a strange compulsion to open an account, anyway) and I was very sceptical about Spotify when I first heard about it.

I mean, just look at it’s slogan: A world of music. Instant, simple and free

Should listening to music really be that easy?

When I was a kid, discovering music used to involve the following:
1) Save up pocket money
2) Go to some horrible chain store – W H Smith’s, Woolworths etc.
3) Pay £10-15 for a CD album
4) Devour liner notes on the way home in parent’s car
5) Play chosen to death, while simultaneously convincing yourself that is the best thing ever

Now it goes something like this:
1) Install Spotify
2) Search for a band, any band
3) Listen for two minutes
4) Get bored. Search for something else…
5) Continue ad nauseam until random advert interrupts listening experience

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification; it’s what the precious record collector inside of me thinks. The ‘realistic adult’ portion of my brain thinks Spotify could be a useful tool for listening to (fairly low quality) streams of old/reasonably obscure music that I don’t own and can’t afford to risk buying. I’m intending to use it as a try-before-I-buy tool. And rather than hopping around aimlessly, I’m trying to force myself to listen to whole albums.

I’ve just enjoyed Scott Walker’s Scott 3 and X’s Los Angeles, and last night I spent a good thirty minutes in the company of the Shop Assistants. These are great examples of how Spotify can be a force for good. Don’t ditch your record collection just yet, though.

I’ve added 6 new titles to my vinyl library in the last 48 hours.

Love As Laughter: Laughter's Fifth

My first order from Insound.com arrived on Friday, which was a pleasant surprise given that I only ordered it a week earlier. I think that’s a pretty impressive service for transatlantic delivery, especially at the very reasonable price they charge. My order consisted of the debut albums from the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Vivian Girls, along with Love As Laughter’s 2005 release, Laughter’s Fifth. They’re all great, of course, but I’ve particularly enjoyed re-acquainting myself with the latter after being without a copy for the best part of two years. Alan Shulman awarded it a rare 10/10 rating on No Ripcord and I can still understand why. Here’s a snippet from his review:

“This album has everything in the rock canon. Slow burners, volcanic eruptions, blues, goddamnit, its even got a great “geography” song called Canal Street. Which is sad really, because so many people are going to miss it; even the ones who hear it once or twice. Just like Television’s breakthrough 30 years ago went almost completely under the radar, this album is destined to be a lost classic.”

Today I made a rare trip up to Broomhill with the specific invention of spending a good hour or so browsing the racks in Record Collector. In my student days, I practically lived in this shop, and I must have spent thousands of pounds there over the last nine years. I haven’t visited it often enough recently, which is a shame when you consider the fragile state of the music retail business. I’m determined to make more of an effort to support my local independent stores, though, and after today’s experience I don’t think that’s going to be too much of an inconvenience.

Pylon: Chomp

I bought two 12″ singles by Swervedriver, Sandblasted and Rave Down; both are classic tunes from the band’s debut album, Raise, which I reviewed here. My other purchase, and the one I’m most excited about was Pylon’s second full-length, Chomp (a bargain at £8). I haven’t really immersed myself in its charms yet (I only bought it today) but early signs are promising. The Athens, GA band was a big influence on the likes of R.E.M and Gang Of Four, and its music laid the foundations for a lot of dance-rock as we know it today. Indeed, Chomp’s predecessor Gyrate was re-issued by DFA in 2007. George Booker, in his very positive review for No Ripcord, wrote:

“Their fingerprints can be felt all over the better American college rock of the 80s, particularly in dark, insistent bass lines and clean, subtly infectious guitar strums that REM clearly had quite an ear for. Where that band carried these sounds into Byrdsian jangle and harmony, Pylon keeps their attention here strictly on the driving rhythm that makes the whole thing constantly danceable and isolates all the instruments into short, repetitive stabs.”

I haven’t heard Gyrate yet, but I have a feeling I’ll be working my way on to that one soon…

Rock'n'Reel #14

I’m pleased to infrom you that Rock’n'Reel #14 is now available at a newsagents near you.

Aside from a great piece on the Grateful Dead, the issue features an article I put together on Okkervil River. I also supplied two of the photos that accompany the feature.

And if that’s not enough David Coleman writing for you (and I’m sure it is), there are also two reviews of mine to enjoy: Deerhunter’s “Microcastle” and the Sea and Cake’s “Car Alarm”. Both great albums, too.

I’m currently putting the final touches to reviews of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Dan Auerbach for issue #15. I was supposed to do the new Bob Mould one too, but my promo hasn’t arrived yet.

Rather than post the reviews in their entirety, here are some links to articles I’ve written for No Ripcord in the past few months:

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/asobi-seksu/hush

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/the-donkeys/living-on-the-other-side

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/pia-fraus/after-summer

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/white-lies/to-lose-my-life

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/remember-remember/remember-remember

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/the-old-romantic-killer-band/the-swan-with-two-necks

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/thousand-and-bramier/go-typhoon

In the post-grunge nadir of the early nineties Swervedriver’s first two albums – 1991’s Raise and 1993’s Mezcal Head – should have sealed their reputation as one of the finest British bands of the era. You don’t need me to tell you that things didn’t exactly pan out that way. Today’s musical history books have Swervedriver down as little more than a footnote, erroneously lumped in with the grunge scene or, more commonly, the British shoegaze movement; if ever a band deserved a re-appraisal it is Swervedriver.

Looking back, there seem to be a handful of reasons behind the commercial failure of this Oxford band. For one thing they looked pretty strange, especially guitarist/singer Adam Franklin with his dreadlocked hair. The timing of their emergence probably didn’t help either; the dense, atmospheric Raise was released when grunge was still flavour of the month in the UK; its successor Mezcal Head, a more polished rock album with a distinctly American influence, must have sounded like an unwelcome guest at the burgeoning Britpop dinner party. For one reason or another, Swervedriver just didn’t seem to fit; the UK music press knew it and, crucially, the band’s label Creation Records knew it. By the time 1995’s Ejector Seat Reservation arrived, the folks at Creation were far too besotted with Oasis to bother promoting the album. Swervedriver were dropped shortly after its release and Alan McGee went on to win the NME Godlike Genius Award for 1995. No wonder a dejected Adam Franklin moved to the US shortly afterwards. Swervedriver’s moment had passed.

Nearly eighteen years have passed since Raise’s 1991 release but the glorious opener Sci-Flyer still sounds positively thrilling today. Graham Bonner’s explosive drum work is packed with fills that evoke an elaborate NYE fireworks display, while the duelling guitars of Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge fuse thunderous power with melodic subtlety. Franklin’s vocals might sit low in the mix, but Sci-Flyer is no shoegaze track; this pure visceral rock ‘n’ roll at its very best. Further highlights come thick and fast, with Son Of Mustang Ford, Sandblasted and the anthemic Rave Down all maintaining the high standards of the opener.

The tempo shifts back and forth, but Raise remains an intense listening experience from start to finish. Detractors might accuse Raise of sounding dated, a geographically confused artefact from the grunge period, but I have to disagree; nothing else in 1991 sounded quite like Swervedriver, and few guitar bands – and I’m struggling to think of any from these shores – have scaled these heights since. The re-mastered version features four bonus tracks, the pick of which has to be the sprawling Andalucia. A 2xCD deluxe edition could have been interesting – the band recorded plenty of interesting b-sides and EP tracks around this time – but it’s difficult to complain about the quality of the thirteen tunes included. This is truly a landmark album in British rock music. (9)

Mezcal Head was my introduction to Swervedriver and will always occupy a special place in my musical memory. Four or five years ago I had the pleasure of living with an obsessive Swervedriver fan who would blast out classic tracks like Duel and Last Train To Satansville from his basement room on a daily basis. If it had been anything else I would have probably snapped the CD in half but, by a curious process of osmosis, the band’s melodies began to work their way into my head. Intrigued, I delved further into the Swervedriver catalogue, absorbing tracks from Raise, Ejector Seat Reservation, and, to a lesser extent, their final album 99^th Dream. As good as these records were, however, I always found myself coming back to Mezcal Head; it’s just that kind of record.

1993 was hardly a landmark year in British music. Yes, a period of boom was just around the corner but people were still listening to a lot of dreadful music. While Suede’s début album won the Mercury Prize, the Brit Award for Best British Group went to Simply Red and the best-selling album in the UK was Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell II. I can’t help but think that all those Meatloaf fans would have loved Mezcal Head’s signature track, Duel (an NME Single of the Week, nonetheless), but very few of them got the chance to hear it. Duel remains the band’s best known song and for good reason: it still sounds like a blast of fresh air sixteen years on. But if Duel is the only Swervedriver song you know, you’re in for a treat: Mezcal Head has plenty more where that came from.

Last Train To Satansville is an epic, narrative-based tune which name checks Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train and conjures up a palpable sense of noir-ish paranoia. If you think you can hear a roaring motorcycle engine in the outro it’s because you can: the band took a Kawasaki into the studio for this very purpose. That’s commitment for you.

MM Abduction and the Thatcher-baiting Harry & Maggie are great pop songs, while Girl on a Motorbike and Duress are dreamier, atmospheric cuts, which set the listener up for the thrilling finale of You Find It Everywhere. The original US release tacked on the excellent Never Lose That Feeling but, for the purists, You Find It Everywhere is Mezcal Head’s perfect closing tune, a searching, minimalist mid-tempo rocker that just commands you to go back to track one and experience the whole thing one more time.

For my money, Mezcal Head is one of the most criminally underrated records of the nineties. It’s Swervedriver’s finest hour and perhaps one of the last great British rock albums. You should own it. Millions of other music fans should own it. History might have underestimated the importance of Swervedriver but there’s nothing to stop us re-writing history. (10)

Album review published on NORIPCORD.COM

I’ve been without a turntable for a good few years now and my small collection of LPs is packed away in storage in my parents’ house in Cumbria. It’s a sad situation for a music fan.

Over the past few months, however, I’ve found myself gripped by a determination to rediscover vinyl – to build my collection and to fall in love with finding and buying music again. You don’t get a buzz from buying MP3s, and CDs feel increasingly cheap and inadequate.

All my CDs are packed away, too, actually, their contents stored on my computer’s hard drive in a compressed format. Again, it’s sad, but when you live in a fairly cramped city centre flat, something of a necessity.

Last week I took the plunge and bought a Project Debut III USB turntable from the online store, Superfi.

It cost me a reasonable £194 and can be connected to either my PC or the hi-fi/surround system in my living room. In other words, it’s a versatile solution. And I’ve wasted no time in assembling a small collection of new LPs.

My old favourites (including some classic albums by the Pale Saints, the Mekons, Neil Young and Pink Floyd) continue to wait patiently in a cardboard box in a Whitehaven bedroom; my new acquisitions include Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly, Gil Scott-Heron’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Zavvi, £3.50 each) and Fennesz’s Black Sea (a local store called Rare ‘n’ Racy, £12.95).

I’m looking forward to visiting more second hand vinyl stockists and picking up rare and interesting bargains, as well as picking up my absolute favourites on 12″. One of the perks of second hand vinyl is that you can take more risks, picking something up because the sleeve looks interesting, or because you think you might have read something about the artist once. It’s more expensive and somehow less rewarding to do that on CD.

I’ll be posting intermittently about my new discoveries on vinyl over the coming months. I’m thrilled to be excited about going into physical record stores and searching for new sounds again.

After years of quietly blowing people’s minds, Animal Collective have suddenly exploded in popularity/notoriety. Their latest full-length (numero 9, incidentally) has split the blogosphere right down the middle – is it the best album ever, or merely the best album of the decade? Or is it an over-hyped turkey? No, not many takers there.

I like to spend a bit of time getting into my AC records and Merriweather is no different. I want to love it – and I’m sure I will – but I’m taking it one song at a time at the present. My Girls is undoubtedly my favourite; it’s the archetypal immediate AC stand-out (like Peacebone, Grass, and Who Could Win a Rabbit before it) with a hook to rival crystal meth in the dependency stakes. This could be the tune that sucks Panda Bear fans who don’t love the Collective (they do exist, I know a few…) into Merriweather’s elaborate web of kaleidoscopic psychedelia. Let’s hope so. My Girls is going to take some beating in 2009.

I’m particularly proud of this year’s list. I think its strength and diversity provides adequate proof that 2008 was as good a year for new music as any in recent memory. Well, maybe not for hip-hop, but every other genre seemed to come up with the goods.

http://www.noripcord.com/features/top-50-albums-2008-1
http://www.noripcord.com/features/top-50-albums-2008-2

Regarding my personal picks, having had the chance to do some serious listening while compiling the overall No Ripcord list, I’d definitely have to add Amadou & Mariam’s Welcome To Mali and Hercules and Love Affair’s self-titled album. I’m sure there will be more late additions; maybe I’ll re-publish an amended list in January?

These are favourites; I do not view this as a definitive top 29 (!) of the year, because I’m fully aware that there’s a lot of stuff I should have listened to more. More on those at the foot of the list.

1. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
2. Fleet Foxes: Sun Giant EP
3. The Hold Steady: Stay Positive
4. Okkervil River: The Stand Ins
5. Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
6. Of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping
7. Bowerbirds: Hymns for a Dark Horse
8. Shearwater: Rook
9. Jay Reatard: Matador Singles 08
10. The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride

11. Vetiver: Thing of the Past
12. Deerhunter: Microcastle
13. M83: Saturdays = Youth
14. Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
15. The Sea and Cake: Car Alarm
16. Evangelicals: The Evening Descends
17. Wire: Object 47
18. Whatfor: Sooner Later Than Never
19. The Last Shadow Puppets: The Age of the Understatement
20. Ladyhawk: Shots

21. Circus Animals’ Desertion: Circus Animals’ Desertion
22. Dodos: Visiter
23. Fucked Up: The Chemistry of Common Life
24. Magnetic Fields: Distortion
25. Melodium: My Mind Is Falling To Pieces
26. Pale Young Gentlemen: Black Forest (Tra La La)
27. Girl Talk: Feed The Animals
28. White Hinterland: Phylactery Factory
29. Bersarin Quartett: Bersarin Quartett

I really regret not being able to include the likes of Marnie Stern, Amadou and Mariam, Parts and Labor, Portishead, TV On The Radio, Atlas Sound and more – while I’ve heard very good things about all of these records, I simply haven’t been able to listen to them enough to forge an opinion either way. Oh well, there’s always next year.

Boasting a moniker that could easily be used to describe the majority of the No Ripcord staff, Madison, Wisconsin’s Pale Young Gentlemen is an indie band very much on the up.

When Alan Shulman reviewed its self-titled début a mere sixteen months ago, PYG was just another unsigned indie band, albeit it one with a pretty cool name and a cellist. Now, with a clutch of enthusiastic reviews and modest sales under its belt, PYG is back with a polished follow-up, an extended line-up and, crucially, the backing of Madison’s hottest independent label, Science of Sound.

Like many second albums, Black Forest (Tra La La) immediately sounds like a more grown up record than its predecessor. The off-kilter indie sound remains, as do the Eastern European folk influences, but the band’s sound is much richer now; alongside the distinctive cello, we are treated to violins, violas, glockenspiels, harps and horns. And mostly it pays off.

The frantic riffing of Coal/Ivory hints at a heightened sense of urgency; it’s as if PYG knows that this is its moment and, accordingly, there is an audible determination not to screw it up. More established contemporaries at the quirkier end of the indie-rock canon (Tapes ‘N Tapes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!) have publicly stumbled at this stage in their careers, with costly results; a smaller band PYG might not have survived such a slip.

Fortunately, PYG remembered to write some great tunes: Marvellous Design, The Crook of My Good Arm and Kettle Drum (I Left a Note) are all worlds apart from anything on the aforementioned bands’ sluggish sophomore efforts. In fact, in terms of indie-rock music based chiefly around orchestral string instruments, there’s absolutely nothing in the same class as Pale Young Gentlemen in 2008.

Black Forest (Tra La La) is proof that growing up on record doesn’t have to sound boring. Those looking for a sombre accompaniment for the wintry evenings ahead could do a hell of a lot worse than pick up this superb record. (8/10)

Album review published on NORIPCORD.COM