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.

C86 Bollocks

I keep getting suckered into reading online articles about ye olde so-called 'C86 movement'. The reason I get suckered is that I get a nostalgic glow at the mention of The Shop Assistants, The Soup Dragons, The Razorcuts, Talulah Gosh et al. These were the bands that sound-tracked my teenage popkid years. They're the reason I still can't resist the sound of a jangly guitar and get all excited at the sight of a stripy t-shirt and an overgrown fringe. So I click on the link, browse through the blog, see what folks have got to say about those times.

Generally these articles are written by starry eyed kids who're looking back through pink lemonade tinted glasses to plumb what to them is probably fairly ancient history. I'm all for the kids being wistful and idealistic, but jeez they don't half get hold of the wrong end of the stick sometimes. Like the idea that 'C86' was some kind of pop 'movement' when it was actually just a dodgy NME cassette featuring the kind of songs you taped off John Peel. Sadly, Bobby Gillespie didn't share lollipops (ooer!) with Amelia Fletcher. Gregory Fletcher didn't take tea with an anoraked Stephen Pastel. Do a bit of research, the kidz! Ask Uncle Alistair Fitchett. http://www.tangents.co.uk/tangents/main/2002/nov/c86.html

There were some good bands and some gorgeously pristine pop moments (The Bodines 'Therese', Primal Scream's 'Crystal Crescent', The Shop Assistants' 'Safety Net', The Sea Urchins' anything, The Primitives' 'Laughing Up My Sleeve', My Bloody Valentine's 'Another Rainy Saturday'...) And then a bit later there were some less good bands who took the sound and watered it down. The kind of bands whose flexis were attached to the later wave of indie pop fanzines that emerged at the tail end of the 1980s. The market got kind of saturated and I got bored with it and moved on.

It's still fun to reminisce though, so with the aim of providing some utterly subjective background info for the kids, I'm going to make the odd post about what indie pop meant to me in the late eighties (Prior to then I was busy being, first, a Durannie and then a mini-goth) ...

...Okay then, how about the track 'Paint A Rainbow' by My Bloody Valentine, b-side of 'Sunny Sundae Smile'. This single was a perfect package of pop goodness - both tracks sublime hits of mainlined fuzzpop. Plus if you bought the 12" you got the equally fab 'Sylvie's Head' and wonderfully titled 'Kiss The Eclipse' I didn't buy the 12" 'cos there was this rule at the time that it wasn't indiepop to buy 12-ers - they were a rip off and a waste and some kind of indeterminate tool of the Man's oppression. Plus I couldn't afford them.

Anyway, 'Paint A Rainbow' - how we loved singing along to this simple, cutely-named tune, shaking our fringes, turning up the treble so the feedback hissed (our favourite pop music always involved hissing feedback, the fizzier the better). At the time, MBV looked like adorable butter-wouldn't-melt, shaggy, mop-tops. Then I read (somewhere?) that the song was about necrophilia. We listened to the lyrics more carefully...Ewwwww! But also, ha ha! Fantastic! The best kind of pop song is one that sneakily subverts the form. And this one certainly did that. In your face pop kids!

Catwalking

This morning I went in Uniqlo's new Oxford street 'flagship store' and was disturbed to note large posters on the wall depicting a rather wizened Bobby Gillespie modelling Uniqlo's range of reasonably priced winter woolies. If, like me, your teenage pop kid years were spent scouring the music press for images of Mr Gillespie in all his bowl-cut, polka-dot shirted glory, then you will understand how perculiar this pictorial encounter was. In order to soothe my nerves, I found it necessary to go in Topshop to purchase this marvellous cat-strewn confection by Dari Meya. Now that's fashion.

Sound Carriers / The Monks Kitchen / Limn / Mixedcases - 26 October 2007, Buffalo Bar

It's the last Friday of the month. This means it's time for The Beat Hotel, and there’s a bumper crop down at the Fortuna Pop! hop tonight. Every one’s a winner.

This is Mixedcases’ (otherwise known as Mark West from Fanfarlo and Wolfie) first live outing and to celebrate he’s playing in his socks so he can use his toes to manipulate the tiny buttons on the pedals and gadgetry that clusters round his feet. Mark has surrounded himself with equipment, creating a nice sort of bedroom studio effect on stage – it suits his softly glowing, synthy, robot-beat space-pop. It’s the kind of music you’d find snuggled on Sweden’s Labrador Records – gentle vocals atop comforting cough candy tunes that can vere towards the itchily unsettling. 'Time To Go Now' sounds like it’s the great grandson of ‘Space Oddity’, or the sound of streetlamps breathing quietly to themselves on a frosty night. Then it all gets a tad raucous with what sound like the birth cries of a new genre – a mash up of soft-hearted indie electro-pop and clashing, smashing d’n’b beatz. It sounds great – a bit uncomfortable, but invigorating.

Limn’s USP is that they have two drummers sitting centre stage FACING EACH OTHER! Fantastic. Sadly, this thrilling state of affairs doesn’t last long as one of the drummers then starts playing guitar instead; scritchy skree high pitched twingly guitar. Limn have a tendency to mix and match instruments, crunching out all manner of oddball sounds, keeping you on your toes, so you’re eager to hear which path of chaotic tuneage they’ll rush along next. There’s Ron Johnson Records-style awkwardly angled cacophony pop, and then a great sixties lounge ‘Take 5’ kind of moment and one that’s sort of jazz with a ‘My Sharona’ bassline (cripes!) Then Limn make songs that have me thinking, ‘Hmm, Battles but on a picnic, or maybe Animal Collective but without the picnic”. The tunes wibble and weave and allow your imagination to wander with them, so the last one, full of angularly tooting ‘Trumpton’ guitars conjures an image of Hank Marvin on a motoring holiday in idyllic English countryside. With a knotted hankie on his head. Joyful.

The Monks Kitchen seem like they should be Scousers, but I don’t think they are. They play foot-tappy, folk-stroked, shanty-ish songs that twinkle and rumble along on simple bluesy bass lines. A Rickenbacker and a capo-ed acoustic guitar provide a sound like freshly cut grass, full of lovely skittish melodies, whilst the combined Monks vocals add up to some irridescent harmonies. One song makes be go especially melty and unable to stop grinning, and I suddenly realise it’s ‘cos it sounds like The Butterflies Of Love. By the end of their set I'm thoroughly charmed by the sunshine-sparkling-on-the-waves songs that The Monks Kitchen have just conjured so unassumingly for us.

Finally, it’s all aboard a golden cloud with The Sound Carriers to scud about the ceiling on David Crosby’s floatiest, most marshmallow-iest trip. The Sound Carriers are news to me – and hurrah! it’s very good news, ‘cos this is a band that manage to cram in hints of everything you love about the West Coast ‘60s sound: The Byrds, The Buff, Love, CSNY; as well as the retro-futuro sounds of Felt, Stereolab, Broadcast - that dreamily vintage Radiophonic Workshop feel. And then The Sound Carriers throw in a dash of Tropicalia just to liven things up, getting really rarver funky in places.

The band are lead by a string-bending geezer who has an unfortunate default facial expression of deep smugness, as if he knows we're all thrilling to the layers of ringing chords he's knocking out. Maybe he is smug about it - there's no reason not to be. He's accompanied on vocals by a petite, keyboard-playing girl who looks like a cross between Francois Hardy and Juliette Greco, which is clearly a marvellous thing. Also worth noting is the bass player's guitar strap which is decorated with horse brasses - somehow this is quite disturbing. Anyway, a high old time is had by all, swooning and shimmying gently to The Sound Carriers' slightly sinister sun-psych. So much so that the band is able to introduce what could well be the very first drum solo to happen at a Fortuna Pop! gig and yet there is no indie-pop riot. Nice work.

SFA OK

Here is a Candylion I made to celebrate the mind-boggling, irridescent gorgeousness of Super Furry Animals' Roundhouse gig last night. How we danced and sang along and held hands aloft with complete strangers in Furry Solidarity to tunes old and new. A skronky glam-funking 'Baby Ate My Eightball', a chaotically bouncing 'She's Got Spies', doing air-pointing for 'God Show Me Magic', the swoony splendour of 'Runaway' and 'The Gift That Keeps Giving', gut-thumping bass kicking in on the best ever version of 'Receptacle For The Respectable', the usual mixture of gleefullness and indignant anger at 'the man' for the cathartic jump-fest of 'The Man Don't Give A Fuck and...and...argh everything you ever loved about Super Furries ever.

Even when SFA aren't making an effort (no yeti costumes, no alien costumes, no trumpeters dressed as bride and groom, no inflatable demon bears, no tanks, no quadrophonic sound systems, no suits that light-up, no films to accompany each song this time) they can't help but make an effort, so there was a beautifully crafted lighthouse backdrop - with lighting what made it look like the lighthouse was shining it's er, beacon, plus members of the band holding up signs hastily constructed from card and gaffer tape. Oh and Gruff wearing his Power Rangers helmet and singing through the eye, obviously. Effortless, genius entertainment. I love you Super Furries.

Corrie Psycho Suicide Pop

Excitement all round last night in a tension-building, credulity-stretching hour-long episode of 'Coronation Street'. Devil boy David Platt has decided to End It All (or has he?) by plunging his car into the very same stretch of canal that psycho killer Richard Hillman (formerly known as 'Hoppy' Hopwood on 'Grange Hill') attempted to plunge the entire Platt family into some years ago (remember?!) And what does the 'troubled teen' slam into the car stereo to accompany his descent into a watery grave? 'You and Me Song' by The Wannadies. Genius! It's the little things that make me love Corrie.

P.S. Whatever became of The Wannadies I wonder?

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)

Ectogram – Fluff On A Faraway Hill (Klangbad)

Ectogram come from Wales. They have close links with legendary German avant-garde music makers Faust. I mention these things in case they strike you as relevant. Some other points: Ectogram are a band of three people who sound like many more. On their web site, they are referred to as ‘Wales' premier post-tonal dronedelic noiseniks’. ‘Fluff on A Faraway Hill’ is their sixth album.

Ectogram songs build scrabbly, twiggy nests in your head, then scuffle about up there like critters in the loft. Ectogram songs are elemental - they feel like their component parts consist of unidentifiable organic matter; of mysterious dusts and curious stones, eerie weather and unusual mosses. They are constructed of discombobulating layers of textural noise that have a stick-in-your-teeth chewiness. That’s not to say that they make for ‘difficult’ listening though, these are strongly melodic works – you can hum along as sparks of sound snag in the curtains and tendrils of tune whip around the bookcases.

The tracks: ‘Devisor’ warps and drones with a mystical Eastern undertow over bendy skew-whiff notes, whilst vocalist/guitarist Ann Matthews ululates in a girlish tone. For nine minutes ‘Unterrock’ is an exhilarating headlong race through a bewildering forest of pulsing sound, where branches whip back and belt you in the face with little shrieks, with scribbling guitar and lyrics intoned as a mantra. ‘Aspic Liner’ bends and bows in a curiously soothing manner, you can imagine giving yourself up to its rubbery embrace and falling backwards into the dense mattress of sound it weaves from relaxedly epic guitar lines, hypnotic drum rounds and layers of Ann’s voice chanting buried-deep lyrics. It’s good that the album comes with a lyric booklet as it's intriguing to read what’s going on in these songs, ‘a dream of times swollen when crusts made hair curly’ or ‘deer stalker, forest running, algae blooming’, and ‘curmudgeon with his knees bent double’.

The dizzy-making ‘Spanner’ is pleasingly disorientating, its elastic guitar stretching and snapping back in a cheerily sickly manner. Noir-ish night-mare jazz-inflected ‘Toolbox’ slithers on flanging guitar and lullaby rhythms before cracking up into flying scraps of tune that flap about like bats on strings and you try not to get them in your hair. ‘Strategy Theme’ has lovely bell-like Dungen-style guitar ‘licks’ (if you will), that gallop and shudder across a bedrock of rattling, echoy drums and serenely gliding vocals. It sounds like the sun shining too brightly and is a sublime note on which to end.

‘Fluff On A Faraway Hill’ is playfully exploratory, packed with noise-making ideas skilfully interwoven to create some fearsome, tough-sounding psychedelia. An immersive sound-scape for hiding yourself in, camouflaged amongst the strange plant-forms. Not dreamy, more the sound of nature red in tooth and claw.

http://www.centralslate.omnia.co.uk/

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

Kontakte / Freelovebabies / Tamborines - 6 October 2007, Melange

Tamborines photograph: Bob Stuart

Aah! This is most agreeable. I'm clutching a beer, lounging in a lumpy old armchair in cosy surroundings that suggest 'Moroccan-influenced hippy pad circa 1968 meets art student squat circa 1988'. To one side Kate of The Guild of Further Art is delicately creating a psychedelic action painting full of purples and greens, eyelashes and Pre-Raphaelite tresses. Around me, the air is juddering (yes juddering!) courtesy of Kontakte, three blokes boxed into the bijou, be-curtained stage in the corner. They are alternately cajoling and abusing their guitars into creating great sirens of drone-laden sound. Naming ones band after a Stockhausen composition suggests a group with lofty ideals, but you really don't need to think much to get Kontakte - they're pretty visceral. Just turn off your mind, relax and join their trip to a spaced state. The likes of 'Pulse Machines' push humming guitar tones and reverberations up against a backing track of imploding spacerock so the room can't help but be pulled in by the music's traction, warping and nodding amongst the Krautrock embers. Their are no vocals, as there's no need for words. Singing would be a distraction here, lyrics would knock your journey off course. 'Motorik' (they don't want you to miss the point do they?) throbs with heartbeat thumps and a spiralling guitar line that echoes back on itself over steadily rising waves of fuzz. The growling bassline calls up the ghost of late, great drone meisters Loop. Aww, I miss Loop. But never mind, 'cos Kontakte take hunks of rhythm and puresoundwaves and make me twitch with glee.

Free Love Babies are Will Carruthers and assorted chums playing sinuous, seedy, snake-eyed blues. They glimmer amidst a fug of dry-ice, sending out lazy smoke rings of sound. Will is something of a charmer with a fine line in raconteuring (as witnessed on the last UK BJM tour), twinkling sardonically in the gloom. And the man can actually sing! Who'da thunk when he was twanging away on his bass behind Sonic and Jase in the Spacemen that he was the one with the interesting stories to impart and the vocal chords with which to impart them?

The Tamborines are never ones to outstay their welcome, ripping through their fab set of cute, but snarly psych pop soundz with single-minded viciousness, but this time their set really does take the cake. Thanks to a toppling mic stand and consequent equipment malfunctions that eat up all their playing time, we only get three songs. This is a terrible, terrible shame as what we do hear is an all-engulfing roar of fuzz pop - it sounds like enormous cracks opening up in the floor to let the sound woosh out. Structural damage not-withstanding, the band heroically complete their set and we squeeze past the dozens of black clad, leather jacketed scuzz boys copping cigs on the doorstep and on into the Hackney night.