Indietracks Snapshots: I Wear My New Anorak...

...a Fred Perry anorak, mind. It's fine tailoring is much admired by Emily out of Betty And The Werewolves.

Indietracks Snapshots: Marshmallow Kisses

The Marshmallow Kisses ask the very Indietracks question, 'Do you guys like poems?'

After a little encouragement, the reply is a big Indietracks, 'Yeah!' The band then proceed to play amazing outer-space wibbling baroque fairground poetry jazzpop.

Indietracks Snapshots: Help Stamp Out Loneliness

Help Stamp Out Loneliness sound huge and POP! on a rainy afternoon.

They feature not only the Sounds XP fashion correspondent's favourite frock, but also Craig Gannon playing some guitar. This makes us go, 'Blimey! It's THE Craig Gannon!'

Indietracks Snapshots: Simon Love's Feet

Sunday afternoon in the gloom of the Indoor Stage shed something bright catches my eye.

Simon Love isn't wearing any socks. This makes me gasp in horror, 'Are those your feet? Why are they so white?!'

Indietracks Snapshots: BMX Bandits

Duglas' Sesame Street t-shirt, purple pinstripes, flowin' locks 'n' moustache combo make him look every bit the pop maverick he is.

To celebrate I dance like a loon to 'E102' at the end of a set chocka with BMX Bandits hits.

Teenage Fanclub

Under darkening rain-filled skies I fall in love with Teenage Fanclub again.

There are singalonga old songs, must-get-the-new-album new songs, and the world turns into sparkles when they play 'I Need Direction'. Sigh...

Wooden Shjips / Papercuts - 19 August 2009, The Borderline

I am surprised and thrilled by Papercuts. Apart from the nice illustration on their album cover catching my eye in magazines, the band have passed me by so far. I’d been vaguely expecting something kind of abrasive and shouty involving lots of leaping about. This assumption was based purely on the name ‘Papercuts’. Not only does the word sum up something painful, but there also used to be that other band Papercuts feat. bloke what used to be in Symposium hurling himself about shoutily and rather invigoratingly. They did a great gig at The Pleasure Unit once where he climbed on a tiny table and pulled the black-out curtain off the window – only to be reprimanded by the bar staff. ‘Twas aces. Logically, I know that the sound of those Papercuts has nothing to do with these San Francisco-based Papercuts, but my subconscious makes the connections anyway. Stoopid old subconscious, these Papercuts are not noisy at all, they are, in fact, kind of delicate. Which a paper cut is I suppose...

Grab an easy reference to hang on…erm, Mercury Rev and their pastoral psych, Galaxie 500’s hazy glow. Eerie guitar, bass pulses, woozy organ and Jason Quever's soft vocals conjure a cocoon world into which I am soon lulled. Mallets on drums create heartbeats. Songs switch rhythm half way through, about-face and become something else, intricate, entanglements. I’m won over pretty sharpish.

Wooden Shjips are pretty damn perfect. Even with the odd equipment problem. The bass amp cuts out a couple of times, leaving a skeleton version of the music rattling at the walls, but when the bass does kick back in, it just goes to underline how glorious the noise is. The heavy, chugging, unchanging riff of rumbling notes providing a hefty backbone to the songs. Add to this the simple metronomic beats supplied centre stage by the drummer on a v. stripped down kit, plus ghostly organ punching it all along and you’ve got your basic drone ingredients. Yum. Then there is the delicious sound of phasing, slicing up and down through the songs, dragging you in, impelling you to drown in the rhythm. Over this beardy wizard man does minimal vocal bits and sprawling guitar things; squiggling and flanging and wubby wah-wahing, riding through the tunnel of sound in a big ball of reverb.

To add to the general ambience of wiggy, freak-out grooviness, the band have their own back projections flickering across the stage bathing them in disorientating blips of colour and bands of light. People nod along blissfully, some young blokes at the front in Wooden Shjips t-shirts flail crazily, inches away from the guitar, like they’re physically clutching at the sounds its making.

The songs never vary from their template, and why the hell would they? It is, of course, the BEST template for songs. Just ask Jarvis Cocker who is nod-nodding along in the crowd.

Here comes the summershine, expect the best of times. Fave Tunes May/June 2009

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear The Beach Boys processing in a dignified and stately manner

Always The Same – The Legends Heavenly FUZZED pop

Ulysses and The Cats – Whitetree Drifting in the ether soothingness

Rainwater Cassette Exchange – Deerhunter Dippy, slip-sliding folk-pop trip gets a good reverbing

Young Drugs – Crocodiles Deadpan kids do electro-Spectrum lullaby

Brave The Storm - Graham Coxon Finger-pickled and fluting ‘Watch With Mother’ dusty sunshine afternoons

Twin Of Myself - Black Moth Super Rainbow Very twinkly and reminds me of Tangerine

Quicksand - Locust Plaza A lonely wind whistling through a high school that‘s been derelict since 1958

Dancing with abandon to ‘Surrender’ by Cheap Trick at Track And Field Be rude not to

My Baby Don’t Care – King With Captain Sensible, not the '80s Doc Martened shitehawks

City Trains – Music And Movement Swirling and clattering and even better than pretending to be a tree growing from a seed or currants being mixed in a bowl (1970s education, yes)

Indietracks : An Indiepop Compilation (Make Do And Mend)

Indietracks! It’s nearly upon us again. Peer down the line and you can just make out a curl of steam in the distance, woohoo!

If you’re going to the festival, this album is an excellent way of getting yerself in the mood. If you’re not going, then it’s a fine primer for what’s going on over the hills and far away from the mainstream in the land of INDIEPOP: be it jangly, spangly, fuzzy, buzzy, spikey, swoonsome or any other kind of marvellous that the term can encompass.

Friends kick things off with the suitably titled ‘You’ll Never See That Summertime Again’, a perfect piece of sparkling summertime pop that is sort of The Bodines if they’d been submerged in the soaring wistfulness of The Lotus Eaters’ ‘First Picture Of You’ (a total flashback-to-childhood-summer song).

Eux Autres sidle towards Beat Happening terrirtory with their beaty drums, twanglesome guitars and flat emotion-free = emotion-full indie boy/girl vocals. There are laid-back fuzzy Pavementisms from Downdime (more flashbacks, this time to the Subpop summer of 1990). Wake The President have Scottish vocals, to which I am always rather partial, and rush along on handclaps and old-skool Post-cardy jangles that SNAP! at your desert-boot clad heels. Disasteradio use synths and robot vocoder vocals to come across like Super Furries havin’ a disko with Neu!

The Rocky Nest’s track is called ‘Lenny and Jenny Had One Too Many’ which is very annoying of it. However they make intriguingly odd and fuddled soundz like a lo-fi kitchen-sink T.Rex cranking along. And they feature an ex-Fonda 500 so that’s me sold.

More people-what-used-to-be-in-another-band action from Ray Rumours And The No-Eyed Deers, i.e. Ros what was in Electrelane. Unlike Electrelane, ‘Puddles And Rain’ is very simple, rattley and sparse, but thanks to Ros’ open, girlish voice it has a touching warmth.

Moustache Of Insanity’s (don’t say a word) ‘Living Room Pic-nic’ is like a v.v. cutesie version of Schwervon’s ‘Dinner’ with a bit of Esiotrot for afters. Zipper are indeed zippy, guitars crunching along in a Rosehips sort of way with a not-stopping-for-breath girl vocal. Alaska’s ‘She Was A Rockstar’ is utterly adorable swingin’ pop, a companion pice to ‘Talulah Gosh’ maybe?

What’s this? Why, ‘tis Teenage Fanclub, this year’s righteous headliners. Oh no, it’s ‘Cancion de Viernes’ by Cooper, it just sounds EXACTLY like the Fannies, or maybe EXACTLY like The Fannies being Big Star and The Byrds, lots of lazily jangling guitars and sunkissed harmonies. Num.

Fzzztttt! Bloop! The space-time continuum has gone all hazey! Erk! I can’t tell if it’s then or now, for behold! ‘tis Mighty Mighty with ‘Kiss For The Crowd’! Is that an old track or new ’un? Not sure, I’m not completely au fait with the band’s entire oeuvre you know. Though I did always enjoy, ‘Maisonette’, and ‘Throwaway’, and ‘Built Like A Car’ and ‘Biddy Baxter’ and the picture of Bridget Sea Urchin surfing on an ironing board, and… blimey! what time are they playing?

Imagine Broadcast circa ‘The Noise made By People’ trying to go Ye-ye but then going a bit John Barry instead. You might get ‘Alapati’ by the splendidly/sick-makingly named Marshmallow Kisses. Ver Kisses, as nobody should ever refer to them, are going to include Tim from Hong Kong In The 60s amongst their number when they play at Indietracks, and look here ARE HK60s with their sublime, spider-web in the breeze ‘Disintegration’. If you fancy being soothed for a while by sounds that stroke as gentle as a feather, settle yourself in a pew when HK60s grace the Church stage.

Someone needs to take up the mantle of fine penmanship and top pop ideals left lying around by Belle And Sebastian. Maybe Pocketbooks, or perhaps Butcher Boy, both on fine form here, will get there with their elegantly-crafted pop vignettes.

Ste McCabe’s ‘Public Debate’ is Pete Shelly singing The Ramones' ‘I Wanna Live’ and it brings a welcome buzz of distortion to things. Also, Ste says “My hatred of the Daily Mail is bordering on obsession”. Huzzah! With you there for sure.

Forty-four tracks long, this is a bumper summer special of an album. It’s got music from Sweden, Denmark, Spain, USA, UK, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Italy, Argentina… and is an excellent way of taking a peek at the soundz going down on the international pop underground. Print out your festival schedule and start asterisking who you're going to see. All aboard!

P.S. This review was written whilst wearing a dress patterned with apple trees, sitting on a sunny beach, occasionally flicking pebbles into the sea. Afterwards I went and ate an ice-cream. True! Facts!

www.indietracks.co.uk
www.makedoandmendrecords.co.uk

Crystal Stilts / The Bats / Comet Gain – 22 May 2009, ICA

Ian WatsON is DJing. He plays stuff like The Shop Assistants, Pocketbooks, The Smiths, My Bloody Valentine, and, ooh! ‘Psycho’ by The Sonics. Good. I like the ICA despite the alleged dodgy sound. Being in the auditorium is like being a mouse in a black shoe-box. Above us, spread out across a large stage replete with flashy lights and lawks! dry ice, it is The Rolling Stones! no it’s Comet Gain!! It’s kind of eye-goggling seeing them in such ‘professional’ environs. As Rachel says (waving her ‘S&M’ black leather maracas) ‘We are contemporary art’

She’s right. When they’re good Comet Gain are the best, the only pop grupe. Tonight they’re pretty good: Say Yes, Love Without Lies, Why I Try To Look So Bad. They are The Velvet Underground doing ‘What Goes On’ and Love doing ‘Seven And Seven Is’.

Kaye’s tee-shirt has fluffy, flouncy sleeves that look like angel wings. She’s a sublime pop kid. David keeps his jokes to himself, but still cackles openly at the amusements inside his head. He tells us about how Comet Gain went to America and played with Crystal Stilts who had better hair, but Comet Gain had better jokes and were better at drinking. Near the end of an ecstatic pop thrills set, Jon Slade sidles off backstage. He reappears in order to, er, jump offstage and join Helen Shrag in the audience.

The Bats play a short, sweet sunshine set before annoyingly rushing off to play another set in a pub right near our flat, whilst we’re still back in the ICA. The Bats, who I never really listened to in olden times, are fab. Like Mamas and Papas* sliced through with the darkness of good eighties no wave. Darkly shimmering guitars, cosy jangle with an icy bite. And one of their guitarists is a woman - SHOCK!

Crystal Stilts seem a tad lacklustre and complain about the sound all night – unable to hit the right peak of reverb. Frankie is playing boring old sitting down drums, wot a swizz! She does have a teeny tambourine taped to the tom though. With singer Brad not being one for cheery chats with the crowd and guitarist JB skulking by his amp, breaking strings and not really being much of a presence, organist Kyle (also to be seen larking in The Ladybug Transistor) takes over proceedings, both sonically as rockingly mournful notes ripple through the songs, and in communing with the crowd.

Ooh, he’s a card, telling us about playing in Italy where "they didn’t understand a word", and offering his admittedly excellent tee-shirt (a dog saying "Kevin") for sale at the bargainous price of £80. Feck offers the quids. The price rises to £100. Feck heckles ‘Wankers’. Kyle respondes ‘Sexy wankers’ and the whole shebang ends with in a smash hit pop blur.

* Did you see that BBC 4 ‘documentary about The Mamas and Papas? Gah! ‘twas a ridiculous whitewash that probably broke all kinds of torture laws by playing ‘California Dreamin’ over and over and OVER. There was no mention of the crazy, messed up marriages/affairs/kicking out of Michelle Phillips/drug frenzies etc.