The Early Years - Like A Suicide (Sonic Cathedral)

Regular worshippers at Sonic Cathedral will surely have experienced glorious krautrock voyagers The Early Years, as they're frequently seen declaiming from the Cathedral's pulpit (is that enough ecclesiastical imagery now?). To celebrate Sonic Cathedral's tenth single release, the band have cranked a few levers and boosted themselves into electronica hyperdrive for 'Like A Suicide' (like Suicide the band - get it!) A mechanically churning intro spits out a factory-line groove that rumbles away throughout, becoming progressively more throbbing as the song powers its way through territory reminiscent of Death In Vegas' shoegaze-rockunroll-electro mishmashes. Electricity-comes-from-other-planets Neu-style skirls and loops twirl under some rather strident vocals which add a kind of, cripes! Numanoid feel to things. And then there's this unhinged scrabbling guitar making it all deliciously disorientated. It's sorta kosmiche electro space-drone glitch disco and I reckon it could sound ALMIGHTY live.

Driven by a monster authoritarian drumbeat, AA side The Computer Voice sounds like machines communicating, flickering static, glowing wires and more of those portentous vocals. Glowering.
An intriguing aperitif to the second album. More of this wibbling experimentation please.

http://www.soniccathedral.co.uk/
www.myspace.com/thesoundoftheearlyyears

The Lovely Eggs – I Like Birds But I like Other Animals Too (Filthy Little Angels)

Living up to their name (the ‘Lovely’ bit mainly), The Lovely Eggs sent me a charming letter along with their CD. It’s got drawings in different coloured felt-tips and everything. Like their letter, The Lovely Eggs music has a cracked-childhood deranged sweetness to it. On first listen, their record is a trifle startling, but then you get all endeared by the simple kid-fi honesty of their songs.

Lead track, ‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’ has got the most ‘instrumentation’ going on, skittering along on trashy, thrashy guitar, twinkling glockenspiel and Holly’s Violet-Elizabeth brat vocals. “Cuck, cuckoo, cuck, cuckoo, cuck, cuckoo koo” they sing and the see-saw tune rams itself into your brain for good, like someone singing, “I know a song that’ll get on your nerves”, only without the getting on your nerves bit.

Next, set against the military patter of a drum and one-note recorder tootling, Holly sings a paean to the brill illustrator Jon Carling (www.myspace.com/ifeltthat), “I know an artist and he draws about owls”. It’s a fitting tribute; curious, a little twisted, fallen-down-a-rabbit-hole magical – like Carling’s work. The song is preceded by fellow Egg David (maybe?) listing different breeds of owl – soothing/unsettling.

Then there are assorted la la lo lo fi ravings, 'Dirty At Farms/I'm Having A Party/Cops And Robbers/Fade' which sound like the tapes we made as kids, singing earnestly but a bit stupidly, enjoying just making stuff, saying whatever; “I always get my shoes dirty at farms”; “Cops and robbers, crime and punishment, cops and robbers”.

‘I’m Having A Party’ has muffled vocals and a rattling drum that might not be a drum and is reminiscent of the first Beat Happening album – tracks recorded RIGHT HERE with 0 instruments – no production or layers of blah, just straight-up communication of songs and ideas, out of their mouths and into yr ears.

When The Lovely Eggs music comes to an end, you feel a bit bereft, like you’ve been playing with your mates all day, caught up in your own zig-zagging world and now they’ve gone home for tea and it’s just you and normalness again.

www.myspace.com/thelovelyeggs

Soon - Japancakes (Sonic Cathedral)

Wooziness, mmm, it's great. Floaty, drifty, spacey sounds that fill the world with downy clouds and lazily spiralling dust motes. Wooziness is Japancakes' stock-in-trade. They use that most deliciously laconic of instruments, the pedal steel guitar, to great effect, invoking a fug of dreamy well-being in their songs that makes you just want to, well, pass out. In a good way.

Last year, Japancakes 'controversially' put all their wooziness powers into creating a marshmallowy instrumental version of My Bloody Valentines 'Loveless'. Yes the whole album. With pedal steel and cello taking the place of the original's gauzey, distanced vocals. It's a great album if you fancy a spot of cross-eyed ,wibbling, other-dimensional lift-muzak. Which we all do now and then don't we? Apparently we don't as a few shoegazey blow-hards have kicked off about Japancakes' experiments with 'Loveless'. Ho hum.

Anyway, now the ever delightful Sonic Cathedral are putting out two remixes of Japancakes' versions of MBV's 'Soon' and 'Touched' on double A-sided 7" white vinyl. Nice.

'Soon' has been roughed up into a hedgehog ball of spikes by James Rutledge. Juddery, Christ-the-cd's-stuck! messed up beats. Where the original see-sawed sinuously, this fits and skitters curiously.

Ricardo Tobar takes 'Touched' and stretches it into a vast Balearic summer space-out. The original - a brief between-track soundscape shimmer - is sent reeling through hyperspace on a dubby, clubby bassbeat. Trippy whalesong echoes of Japancakes' gliding guitar noise rise and fall across fathoms of...I'm trying not to say 'blissed out' here, but, hell, that's what it is...a blissed out sonic skyscape.

http://www.soniccathedral.co.uk/

Somewhere - The Hot Puppies (Purr Records)

Ooh, you can't accuse The Hot Puppies of having no sense of pop drama or a lack of sparkling ambition. 'Somewhere' is an expansive fantasia of a song that sees the band grabbing you by the hand and flying out across the rooftops to meet your fairy-tale self. Its a song of diamond stars winking above darkened treetops, of chasing dreams and catching them on the other side of the rainbow, of making you use words like 'gorgeous' and 'swooning' and 'these kids are crazy, but I love 'em!'. Its an insanely epic flight of fancy and if it doesn't get your spine tingling, you are clearly clinically dead.

Singer Becky embraces her inner fairy princess, her voice swooping and soaring above an enchanted forest of sound. She's a knowing Dorothy in a 21st Century Oz (no coincidence that the way the first word is sung echoes the opening of 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'?). Click your heels together three times and let the almighty pop woosh carry you to "somewhere we can build our fires and find a new way to be young."

www.thehotpuppies.com

Available on ltd edition 7" vinyl from www.purr.org.uk

The end of summer on Bookbinder road – Cocoanut Groove (Phonic Kidnapping Records)

Oh my! This is amazing. Cocoanut Groove is the work of Olov Antonsson (yes, another talented Swede – bah!), his pop daydreams fleshed out into real live moments of exquisite beauty with the help of numerous musicians. With ‘The end of summer on Bookbinder road’ they have created an astonishing thing. It’s baroque pop with a big, teary sound and on first listen you’ll feel like you’ve known this song all your life, whilst wondering where it’s been all this time. There’s melancholic brass, gauzy flute, and best of all a harpsichord stretches sedately underneath the whole thing – this pleases me immensely. My ideal band (the one in my head) has a harpsichord.

The obvious band name to drop here is The Left Banke – masters of sweeping pop moments that sparkle like jewels and of course the finest harpsichord purveyors in the pop universe. But there are also hints of Saint Etienne’s soft pop side and The Young Tradition’s sugar-spun West Coast-isms.

Even the title is perfect, like the name of a lost children’s literary classic full of scratchy ‘50s line drawings and a fading two-colour print dust jacket.

B-side ‘Shadow’ is spare and a little bit folky. Olov’s regret-stained voice, gently plucked guitar strings and a spectral violin suggest ripples spreading quietly over the surface of a pond. The music perfectly complements the imagery of the lyrics, ‘the stillness of the afternoon’, ‘a hazy August sky’ and ‘ten dusty books on a dusty shelf’. Sounds like holding your breath and remembering.

Buy this record and play it on repeat right now:
http://www.myspace.com/phonickidnappingrecords
http://www.myspace.com/cocoanutgroove

Always On The Telephone - The Ladybug Transistor (Fortuna Pop!)

I love The Ladybuggers, but it took me a while to come to terms with their sixth album, ‘Can’t Wait Another Day’. Sasha Bell no longer numbers among the band’s line-up, which is a shame as I have a bit of a lady-crush on Sasha and her ice-cold mountain stream voice. The music sounds more mature, less psychedelisised. And by the time I had come around to the album, the time to write about it had passed. Here, though, is a single from that album and cripes! it’s a track I initially had a bit of a prob with. This is mainly due to the saxophone solo and my immature inability to cope with same. As Gruff Rhys once said, ‘I vomited throughout your saxophone solo’.

So the sax makes me flinch a bit. The guitars though…Ahh, the guitars are liquid and luxurious. They peal out over everything as underneath the song glows warmly, country-tinged and rueful. There’s a downy, soft-focus quality to it all, like squinting through sunspots on the windscreen, or rummaging through browning photos of a long ago road-trip.

I can’t comment on the sleeve artwork for ‘Always On The Telephone’ ‘cos my copy doesn’t have any, but the cover photography for ‘Can’t Wait Another Day’ is sumptuous. Two of the band sit in an old subway carriage coloured in deep reds and dark greens. It suggests a mahogany seriousness, a grown-up-ness that comes from travelling and learning and managing to make your way through life without keeling over. Inside, the sleeve has images of expansive landscapes, each one leading the eye and the mind away towards a central vanishing point. There are paths to travel, journeys to make, horizons to explore beyond. And that’s what The Ladybug Transistor sound like. A rich sound. And really rather gorgeous.

(P.S. Photo taken by me. On my birthday)

Sa Trace Silencieuse – Minimilk (Phonic Kidnapping Records)

Minimilk is Remi of Electrophonvintage / The Sunny Street murmuring in French to the accompaniment of a gently strummed guitar (courtesy of Sebastien). Remi sent me a nice letter with this record in which he uses the word ‘maladroit’ and for that alone I salute him. However, these four gossamer bossa tracks are also a reason to take a celebratory sip of coffee and stare wistfully out the window. These wispy songs, delicate as cobwebs, are the soundtrack to your own personal Truffaut film. They are breezes through open windows, sunlight flashing on lakes, buttercups under chins, lounging in the long grass and thoughtful walks home. Remi says the songs were recorded ‘a few years ago in the sunny kitchen…’ which is exactly how it should be. Tiny exquisite moments, elegantly packaged.

http://www.myspace.com/minimilkmusic

http://www.myspace.com/phonickidnappingrecords

Projekt A Ko vs. Horowitz (Filthy Little Angels)

Like Talulah Gosh using childishness as a form of subversion, or Orange Juice being deliberately fey because it was punk, Horowitz are the sound of cheekily thumbed noses and being provocatively cutesy to get people’s backs up. This isn’t pigeon-toed limp indie with downcast eyes, but the sound of a band thoroughly revelling in the concept of twee-pop.

‘Sweetness I Could Die In Your Arms’ is a good old-fashioned jangle-pop anthem buzzing and sparkling, designed to turn the dance floor into a whirl of stripy t-shirts and flying fringes. It makes me remember why I fell for the anorak pop sound in the first place. Why it seemed like a rallying cry for the dispossessed – yes we have bowlcuts and dufflebags, but we’ll poke you in the eye with a lollipop and stomp on your feet with our Startrites, turn the treble up and make your ears bleed.

‘Hug Target’ (such an icky title it’s great) begins and end with perfect squeals of feedback (yum!) and in between weaves its merry way on an irresistibly chiming tune topped with la la las and Ian’s Gregory Webster on helium (yes! imagine that!) vocals. Sha la hurrah!

Over on the other, er, side (this ‘split seven inch’ is actually a collection of stinky old mp3s for me) we find more lovely distortion courtesy of Projekt A Ko who were once three-quarters of fab raygun noisters Urusei Yatsura. ‘Nothing Works Twice’ sees the band operating on the if-it-ain’t-broke premise, kicking up a welcome dust-storm of crunchy noisome pop. There are cheeky screeches of strangulated feedback, scratchy rhythms and cheery foot-to-the-pedal singalong bursts of tuneful chaos. ‘Goodbye Sunlight’, on the other hand, begins with unfettered guitar strumming, lulling you into a false sense of security before the fuzz-pedals get hit. The wooziness of the tune even hints at the sounds of late sixties soft-pop (say Harpers Bizarre or someone). A fabulous combination of J Mascis-style laidbackness and um, J Mascis-style guitar torturing. Sounds like going out on summer evenings as the light fades and the streetlamps come on.

Facts bit: The single, featuring two songs by each band, is limited to 200 copies, available exclusively online. You can order it now from http://www.filthylittleangels.com/

All Hat And No Plans / Great Expectations – My Sad Captains (White Heat)

A double A-side from your fave superior-quality, melody-plying twangle merchants. Both tracks slather on that delicious, rollingly lush, glowing Captains sound you want to throw your arms right round. It would take a venomous churl indeed to deny the glorious, soft-focus (bitter) sweet-heartedness of this brace of pop lovelies.

‘All Hat And No Plans’ lays out a picnic of exuberant, chewing-gum guitar, dippy divey harmonies and la la las tempered with just the right amount of rough-edged buzzing waspiness to stop it all being syrupy. Just try and stop your heart leaping.

‘Great Expectations’ (they’re quite literary aren’t they? This is good to see) has the wee bespectacled singer man going "I’m gonna get you out of this if it’s the last thing I ever do" in a surprisingly rich voice (this is good to hear) and makes my memory hear fab olde pop tune ‘Nancy Sinatra’ by The Groove Farm. If that wasn’t delightful enough, the song slides lovingly into a series of "do ron ron a do rons" and it turns out that’s exactly what you needed to hear at that point. Genius!

http://www.myspace.com/mysadcaptains

This City Holds Us All E.P. - The Situationists (Tough Love Records)

You’d think being called The Situationists would require a band to at least live up a little to the spirit of Debord – throw in a little discombobulating mischief, at least line their CD sleeves with glass-paper or something. But no this is the usual stuff; angular guitars, frantic vocals, young people being fake-earnest, pretending to be inspired by early-‘80s fractured pop, blah blah, Futureheads blah blah. Jolly enough popstuff for the kids, but not half as much fun as The Gandalf The Grey album I’ve just downloaded – the man’s wearing a cape and a pointy hat and singing about being bohemian in Greenwich Village through a Tolkien-ian filter. Ho, yes, ridiculous. Who’s the real Situationist here?*

(*Clue: Guy Debord, obviously, even if he is dead)

It Won't Be Long Now - The Brights (Bitterscene Records)

Are we having a Britpop revival now? Look at The Brights with their wee mod haircuts and cups of tea - bless their little RAF target socks. Remember when there were a few months where The Bluetones seemed like an exciting pop prospect? When they first popped up with ltd. ed. seven inches of 'Slight Return' on inky blue vinyl and played gleeful gigs with jangling, shimmering 60s-toned guitars? Well that's a bit what The Brights sound like here. There's also an Undertones warble to the vocals and a Johnny Marr twangle to the guitars, which can't be bad. 'It Won't Be Long Now' is quick-stepping modboy indie-pop with exactly the right amount of jangling top-spin. 'Wear Your Art On Your Sleeve' fizzes along briskly with sparkling lemonade guitars. Both tracks on this seven inch, released by esteemed 'indiependently minded' Chelmsford types Bitterscene, are gratifyingly fresh sounding, a record to shuck off your blankets and throw open your windows to. The Brights bring us Springtime several months early and do spinny little dances on Winter's grave.

(P.S. Look out for Brushfield Street in Spitalfields on the sleeve. I used to walk down there every day. Good job I don't have to anymore, 'cos my heart breaks every time I see what's been done to the place.)

http://www.thebrights.co.uk/
http://www.bitterscene.co.uk/bitterscenerecords.htm

You Think You Can Dance, You Think You Can DJ - Friends Of The Bride (Young and Lost Club)

In the middle of the night, I drift into semi-wakefulness to find I am conscientiously composing a review of this single. I have concocted a brilliant description of Friends Of The Brides’ sound that involves melding the term ‘Bossa Nova’ with something utterly unlikely and indie-grubby. It seems like a good idea at the time, but in the cold light of day I’m not sure bossa nova or indie grubbiness have that much to do with things here. Or do they?

The key to Friends Of The Bride lies in singer Bobby Grindrod’s passion for all things swelegant. A harnessing of fifties dash and charm plus a certain amount of stylish caddishness. His perfectly pitched knowing croon, peppered with wry eye-brow-raised asides ("Is that a moustache or are you drinking hot chocolate?") is buoyed upon an invigorating helping of hectic brass rushes, scowling guitar and really quite filthy bass. The result, ‘You Think You Can Dance, You Think You Can DJ’ shows you can never have too much swing. Oh boy, does this swing. FOTB are no throw-back pastiche, their sound is an elegant collision between then and now; their lovingly realised period detail is roughed up by a modern rogue-ishness that ensures your toes can’t help but tap, urging you to take off for a silky skim of the dance-floor.

To accompany the single, there’s a sumptuously de-saturated colour film clip that captures FOTB’s curious Through the Looking Glass take on the fifties beautifully. By the end you should be swept off your feet.

One, Two, Three – The Loves (Fortuna Pop!)

People Who Know love The Loves because they have a pick ‘n’ mix feel for all that is good on the great sweetie stall of popular song, slyly cramming handfuls of the tastiest treats into the secret pockets of their vintage overcoats. This new E.P. proves the point marvellously, with four very different pop nuggets, each bursting with melodic goodness.

The Loves’ bubble-gum pop odyssey continues apace with nifty slam-dunk glam stomp ‘One Two, Three’, a song that pretty much demands you do that bending at the hip with your hands wedged in your jeans pockets dance. It’s a classic nursery rhyming singy song-along (see also, er, ‘ABC’) with big boomy drums and backing vocals that sound like they’re being chanted by a stray Bay City Roller fan. Another instant pop smash from Simon Love and his hip to the beat gang. Also, in my head, ‘One Two Three’ keeps morphing into The 1910 Fruitgum Company’s ‘1,2,3 Red Light’, a song covered by The Pooh Sticks, a band The Loves reminded me of the first time I ever saw ‘em (it was a good thing). See, what goes around comes around in the big day-glo daisy chain of pop.*

Oh look here’s a live version of The Loves’ perennial girl-pop ditty ‘Chelsea Boy’! It’s all slinky with oceanic cymbals and little-black-dress atmospherics. Imagine a single tear falling from panda-eye make-up, tracing a glistening path down a pale, powdered cheek. There are bee-hive hairdos, pearly lipstick, and the Kray Twins are probably at the bar. Best bit is when the unlikely line ‘I’d batter you’ is sung in an emotingly straight-faced heartfelt way.

‘When I Get My Gun’ sees Simon Love getting all red-necked and vitriolic, threatening to ‘Skip with your intestines / Play football with your head’ to a twangily, toe-tappin’ chunk of cow-punk, nasal-voiced nastiness. You probably deserve it, mind. That just leaves us with a cheery charge through Jonathan Richman’s ‘Pablo Picasso’ which chug-a-lugs piano-thumpingly with Velvets in the basement vivacity. Nice.

(*Check out the top bendy knees dancing and double tambo action in this olden film of The 1910 Fruitgum Company. Plus! footage of traffic lights - just to get the message across)

Eggs and Chips - Manic Cough (Purr Records)

Manic Cough have a hamper-load of irresistible, barmy tunes and it’s always exciting when they unpack a couple more and set them out on the picnic rug for you to wolf down whilst swatting at buzzy wasps. This time round you get served a stream-of-bonkersness, energetic knees-up which starts as it ends with a tippy-tappy-tip tickling of the drums, and in between whirlwinds jauntily around with the Cough’s trade-mark skankin’ boisterousness.

"Eggs and chips and Weetabix, what a good mix in the morning" you’re sagely advised and at first you’ll be thinking "Coo! Slits-y free-falling jerk pop!" then you’ll suddenly get reminded of Elastica when they were cheeky and good. And no this isn’t ‘cos you’re listening to ladies singing and thus feel the need to compare them with another band with, y’ know laydeez in, it’s ‘cos Manic Cough suddenly start shouting "st, st, st, STUTTER!"

The wonderous thing about Manic Cough is that they manage to sneak tremendously toe-tapping melodies in amongst their dayglo rioting sticks and stones sound, they’re oddball but irresistible. Oh, and for the love of God, make sure you get yourself the bonus download-only track ‘Blue or Red’, a giddily sinuous wriggle-athon rave-up of "yee-has!" that features the genius clarion call ‘Oi! Oi! Saveloy!’ A must-have pop moment.

www.myspace.com/maniccoughh
www.purr.org.uk

P.S. Note sumptuous record sleeve photography by Bob Underexposed