You’ve been counting all the meltdowns you’ve been having. Fave Tunes May/June 2010

Harlequin – Heron Incredibly English folk rock, you can smell the overcast summer afternoons

One Last - Avi Buffalo Catchy and wistful and sunny afternoon-ish

Francis – Betty And The Werewolves Garagey in a Crystal Stilts way, sounds like strawberry ice-cream and regret.

Helicopter – Deerhunter Embraces you with soft guitars and soothes away the weariness

Radio Dept – Never Follow Suit Like hearing St Etienne’s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ through the wall.

Teenage Fanclub – Baby Lee In my head this is called ‘Geddy Lee’. Sounds good when sitting in the front seat on top of a number 8 bus first thing on a summer Saturday.

Long Flight – Future Islands Like ‘Sugar’ by My Bloody Valentine playing over an Animal Collective demo.

Sweetest Star – Easter Sun Deliciously aching indiecountrypsychfolkpop for staring at wispy clouds to.

Song – Turid Magical sixties Swedish psychfolk eddying round your ankles

Great Sky Bear – The Reading Rainbow Bratty, scratchy, soar-away pop. Plus the album artwork’s great

Harmonium – The Soundcarriers The United States of drifting through the ether.

Camera & Tremor - The Tamborines (Beat-Mo Records)

It’s very late. Or maybe really early. You find yourself on a narrow sidestreet you’ve never really paid much attention to before. Sound throbs from an open doorway and you step closer to investigate. There’s a shabby corridor painted deep red, steep steps that lead you into a dimly lit basement room. It’s loud in here. Very loud. The noise is disorientating and you put out a hand to balance yourself. Turns out you’re clutching the edge of the bar, so you order yourself a drink. It’s vodka or nothing here. A pure, clean rush. It burns satisfyingly on your lips as you flick your eyes across the crowd. Everyone’s dressed entirely in black. Some of them wear sunglasses and move languidly through the noise as if it’s physically restraining them. Some shake their heavy fringes in time to the ricochet drumbeats.

A man’s voice singing, “I trip inside your wired mind”. There’s a band onstage. Shaky Super 8 film flickers across the back wall and camouflages the players. You see an eye here, a hand there, a pointy boot, a perfect bowlcut. Three people are making that colossal sound. Guitar and keyboard growl and throb, whine and shimmer whilst the drummer hammers it all home. It’s heavy and it makes you want to move. To nod your head and stamp your feet. You move closer to the stage and let the music judder through you, sound-waves pulsing the air around your face.

Then you’re taken by surprise. A tambourine shaken HARD splits the dissonance. There’s sweetness amongst the snarl. The fuzz ‘n’ distortion crowd are here because they like a hit of POP with their raw power. A taste of honey with their bouquet of barbed wire kisses. Here are tunes that dip and glide and make you feel secretly serene. You realise that these songs are going to be indelibly inked into your mind from now on. There’ll always be a swooping melody or a keyboard line tumbling over and over to rush you along through the tumult. The noise is building again, pedals are stomped, strings are scratched, four notes on the keyboard that won’t take no for an answer. Ultra-white strobe lights shiver on and off, on and off, on and off, slicing up the room into disconnected slivers off space and time…

You wake on Sunday Morning. In your head there’s a honey bee buzz. Unfurling your clenched fingers you find you’re clutching a scrap of paper. Written in tiny letters, all lower-case, it says, ‘camera & tremor’.

www.thetamborines.com

May Has Come and Gone

May was a super slap-up sonic sensation of a month as I finally got to see Deerhunter and Dungen. I love both these bands’ records SO MUCH, but have never got around to seeing them play live. It was good to be REALLY EXCITED about going to both gigs. I also saw The Brian Jonestown Massacre playing a sober, non-argumentative wiggy psych out at Shepherd's Bush Empire to a mosh-tastic crowd; Avi Buffalo making summertime shivers at Rough Trade; The Radio Dept playing at Bush Hall where they seemed to backtrack to being more jangly and less keyboard atmospherics-y and made me swoon when they played ‘1995’ even though it went a bit wrong; AND Prof. Brian Cox doing a sweary talk with equations and photos of the cosmos. Oh yes.

Deerhunter – 6 May 2010, Heaven

Deerhunter play Heaven – I haven't been there since back in like, er 2001, as I have always found it rather annoying, but this time we find a relatively squish-free haven near the front, craning our necks to peer up at the exceedingly high stage. Why is it that high? It's insane! The sound is apparently set up for big beaty club nights, and as a result some of the sonic subtlety of Deerhunter's shivery guitar creepiness is lost. Indeed at one point the thump of the bass drum near splits my head in twain. I'm all for a colosally thunderous noise that erases your very being, but nuance can be cool too you know. Still, sometimes the guitars sound like stained glass and roundabouts, and make me hold my breath with happiness.

The set begins with ‘Cover Me’ / ‘Agoraphobia’, their luxuriant somnolence making my heart swoon, although apparently this pairing is a regular set opener and thus not so exciting for Deerhunter old timers. ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’ gets all munched up and funky punked, ‘Little Kids’ sounds like the smell of summer lawns, but its ‘Nothing Ever Happened’ that drops jaws. The song splurges into a cocooning Krautrocking big fat drone-out, Joshua Fauver’s bass circling its way round a few notes over and over and overandoverforever whilst Bradford Cox scribbles six strings across the top. At one point he rubs his guitar against one of the big hanging speakers to the left of the stage, scraping new sounds out wherever he can. The song stretches out awhile, cradling us in its rhythm. I’m impressed by Moses Archuleta’s ability to keep drumming for the duration. Seeing the band live makes me appreciate the fact that they ARE a band, not just Bradford Cox and some blokes. This is hammered home when guitarist Lockett Pundt takes the lead to sing new song ‘Fountain Stairs’.

The lighting is amazing and makes you realise how much more can be done with a decent rig, rather than the usual red and blue lights turning on and off a bit. Maybe it would be nice to see the band a bit more as they’re mostly obscured by the atmospherics, but having the music emerge from these shadowy figures partly obscured by a gauze of pale light kind of adds to the foggy mystique of it all. There is very little band/audience interaction, possibly due to the fact that Deerhunter are towering high above us. At one point Cox ventures a little way down one of the staircases leading from the stage and slings an arm around a slightly bemused bouncer. Later he asks whether we’ve all voted and suggests that better music was made by a Britain opressed by Thatcher.

The majority of the set is taken from ‘Microcastle’, with a sprinkling of tunes from across the band’s output, including the ‘Cryptograms’ monster ‘Strange Lights’ as the feedback-laden closer. We also get more new songs, ‘Revival’ and ‘Helicopter’. Exciting! Despite the curious sound and odd stage, Deerhunter are mesmerising and powerful and until now the idea that this band had much in common with My Bloody Valentine never really rang true with me. I’ve listened to their records obsessively, but now Deerhunter make all new kinds of sense.

Can't You See Me Running? - Fave Tunes March / April 2010

The Burning Mountain - Voice Of The Seven Thunders Eastern tinged freak-out tribal heaviness.

Hollow Trees House Hounds - Cate Le Bon Like if a witch made a glam record

Statement - Boris Wiggy wah wah wahhhhh!

Rest Of Our Lives – Dum Dum Girls If ‘Darklands’ was recorded by girls sitting on the bedroom floor

Banjo Pier – Edward’s Hand Baroque psych for when you’re wishing The Left Banke had recorded more.

Springtime Instrumental – Atlas Sound Awww, this twinkles along making me yearn for sunshine and green leaves and blue skies.

Death’s Not Your Friend (Live) – Wooden Shjips Thundering along in a groovy motorik manner.

Color Dreams – The Deep Ridiculous garage grooviness that insists you dance

What’s In It For? – Avi Buffalo Slightly deranged euphoria. Wheee!

Peter’s Trip – Electric Flag Baroque pop oriental soundtracking

Kings Civil Calendar Control – The New Lines Blissed out music box day dreamyness

The Witch – The Rattles As someone has astutely commented on Youtube – this video is pretty much the first Black Sabbath album cover come to life. Utterly fab

The Primitives, 29 April 2010 – Scala

Paul Court is still a stone cold fox! In black needle-cord jeans, wee pointy Chelsea boots and a mod-ish top, he continues to rock the 60s-tinged cool indie-boy look to perfection. Cor! How come then, all the ageing indie-blokes in the audience have gone so badly to seed? Bulging of gut and naked of scalp they lurch and wallow at the front of the audience like a hideous herd of hippopotami. They’re having a marv time, bless ‘em, so I fling myself into their midst deciding to represent the laydeez in their good-natured moshpit. Yay! The Primitives are back, and all my worries about destroying cherished pop memories dissipate as I fling myself about to the oh so familiar tunes. The set opens with a quintet of songs from the band’s bestest earlier days; ‘Everything Shining Bright’, ‘Stick With You’, ‘Dreamwalk Baby’, ‘Thru The Flowers’, ‘Way Behind Me’. It’s quite hard to be objective about songs that are so embedded in my heart, much better to just get caught up in their rush and sing along.

There’s a fizzy cover of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘Need All The Help I Can Get’ Tracy injecting the vocals with a slight note of hysteria. There are argh! two later tracks which I’ve never heard; ‘Empathise’ from the oh dear third album and ‘Summer Rain’ from the second album, about which Paul mutters something to do with codeine, I think. Not sure if he means the song ‘Codeine’ or whether it’s a good tune to listen to having imbibed codeine, or maybe it’s about taking codeine, “I don’t feel anything today”. Or maybe I totally misheard him. Hmm. We listen patiently, it’s quite nice, lilting and wistful.

The ageing indie-blokes get themselves moving during the classic singles triumvirate of ‘Stop Killing Me’ (singing along, squished in the scrum, I mean this fairly literally), ‘Really Stupid’ and ‘Crash’. I’m shoved sprawling onto the rather low stage for the billionth time (gathering impressive bruises on my legs as I go) and when I look up Tracy is smiling at me. I am blessed by her golden blondeness! Like Paul, she seems to have barely aged at all and is managing to carry off a slightly eccentric outfit (including blue tutu, sparkly fishnets and red suede platforms) with popstar aplomb. This is because she is a star, hanging off the mic stand, tripping about the stage, bashing a tambourine, dragging the eyes of the indie-blokes after her like a cute, sparkly tractor beam.

Tig is still there drumming at the back, being the drummer and that. And over on the right is a bass player who isn’t Steve (sorry bass man). This is kind of the reason we’re all here, Steve’s death last year prompted the remaining Prims to get together in his memory and test out being a band again. It seems to be working pretty well. Sweetly, they dedicate the swoonily heart-melting ‘(We've) Found A Way (To The Sun)’ to Steve. It ends in a gently fuzzy haze, as Paul turns his guitar on his amp for a spot of feedback. Perfection.

ETHER 10: Broadcast / Oliver Coates and Anna Meredith, 21 April 2010 – Queen Elizabeth Hall

Oliver Coates is an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre in London. His biog reads ‘Olly loves to play all kinds of classical music alongside new experimental forms’. It’s the latter we’re getting – and how! – tonight. He scrapes and plucks and wallops his cello, playing single bowed notes and sampling them, building up minimalist rhythms that ebb and flow but never do anything as crass as create a tune. He is joined by composer Anna Meredith, who mainly seems to sit immobile, occasionally encouraging a laptop to spew out odd sampled soundscapes. It’s a rum do. Made rummer for the last few songs by the addition of some ‘live drawing’ which can be seen projected onto the screen at the back of the stage. It’s basically someone fannying about in Paintshop Pro doing stupid scribbles, I’m not sure if it enhances the listening experience or just increases one’s suspicion that this is a big artwank joke. Especially when photos of horses get pasted onto the drawing and then squiggly laser beams are drawn coming out of their eyes. Lordy!

During the interval (it’s the kind of gig where the bit when you go to the bar between bands gets called an interval) Broadcast come on and set up. I’m disappointed to see Trish Keenan is wearing old jeans and a shapeless top – wither the groovy esoteric 60s garb? S’okay though, when they take to the stage properly, Trish has on a white a-line frock with big bell-shaped sleeves, decorated with a witchy looking black pendant, long black hair centre-parted. She looks like a member of a cult, or maybe a coven. Cool.

Broadcast are now just Trish and James Cargill (going for the hip professor look in a patterned jumper) and as the first section of tonight’s set begins, an improvised soundtrack to Julian House’s film ‘Winter Sun Wavelengths’, I think about the first time I saw them play, circa ‘The Book Lovers’, when they just seemed like a pleasant but unremarkable Stereolab-ish indie band. It’s been an odd but pleasurable journey from that gig at the Garage to tonight’s refined atmosphere at the QEH. Curiouser and curiouser in fact.

Last year’s collaboration with The Focus Group (featuring…Julian House!) ‘Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age’ was probably my favourite record of 2009, so I am eagerly anticipating a lot of experimental electronic oddness, with hopefully a hint of spooky. This is precisely what we get for ‘Winter Sun Wavelengths’, the duo face each other from behind tables full of electronic gear, twiddle knobs, glance frequently at the film playing behind them and create an unnerving aural spookscape punctuated by Trish’s unearthly keening and wailing. The film looks like it’s been excavated from the attic of a condemned haunted house – probably once used by Trish’s cult-coven. It flickers in black and white hinting at esoteric practices and pagan rituals with eye-blink images of wintery trees and icy December solar flares.

Broadcast experiment with hauntology, music concrete and Radiophonic sounds and in doing so capture that very English take on the occult described by Arthur Machen - an ancient creepiness felt deep in your bones. This they meld with a nice line in retro-futurism, from their clothes, to the analogue equipment, to the science experiment / public service film imagery of the projections.

The next section of the set is entitled ‘Songform And Story’ and includes recognisable Broadcast songs, a juddery ‘Black Cat’ is as funky as things get, electro yet spectral. For ‘The Be Colony’ Trish’s vocals are heavily reverbed, the song scratchy, eerily echoey, it’s two halves, music and voice, only just creating a cohesive whole.

‘In Here The World Begins' sees Trish take centre stage and rhythmically creep towards us and back with the visuals bathing her in dancing coloured light. Her shadowed silhouette on the backdrop grows and diminishes as she dances back and forth. It is a ritualistic performance, spellbinding and slightly sinister.

The words ‘Dream / Ritual’ appear on screen heralding the final film / section of the set and appropriately we get ‘A Seancing Song’, the lyrics intoned in Trish’s ‘Listen With Mother’ voice. The final song sees Trish playing a dulcimer strumstick thingy conjuring an insistent, hypnotic undertow, pulling us under, completing our initiation.

Girls With Guns – Tender Trap (Fortuna Pop!)

“Do you know what you will get if you do say that again? A bullet to your brain.” Guitars twang fiendishly behind Amelia’s swooping voice as she leads her groovy-frock-wearing gang in acts of pesky-boy pummelling, ‘We are watching out for all the girls around this town’. This is ramalama tough (indie)girl pop. Cool comic book girl punk that zooms along propelled by menacingly rumbledethump drums. It’s always satisfying to get a serving of feminism with one’s joyful pop noise, it makes me dance extra gleefully.

The track is available from 10th May as a download from Fortuna Pop! A very tempting taster for Tender Trap’s forthcoming album which we all know is gonna be a pop classic!

P.S. I drew this picture ages ago, but it kind of works here, no?

The Rats In The Cellar E.P - The Blanche Hudson Weekend (Oddbox Records)

Appearances can be deceptive. Some of The Blanche Hudson Weekend were once Manhattan Love Suicides, a band not known for their lullabys, and from the cover of this seven inch e.p. – lo-fi garage-esque, littered with pics of tough dames - you’d be forgiven for expecting a whole lotta racket. But no! Place the utterly lickable Blood! Red! Vinyl! on your turntable (you do have a turntable don’t you? if not, there’s a free download code available with the vinyl) and drift dreamily in a gentle haze where Blondie meet The Primitives in a dank basement. ‘Grip Of Fear’ and ‘Sharks’ are both downily strokeable and Darklands downbeat. Caroline’s voice is whisperingly sweet (though possibly hiding an axe behind its back), the guitars’ fuzz soothes rather than sandpapers. Unnervingly gorgeous.

Over on the flip, ‘Only Snow’ goes for Velvets heartbeats and creepy Cale sawing screechiness within the confines of an elegantly compact pop song. This is the sound of an unhinged personality hidden in the cellar. Compellingly sinister.

The Loves / The Tamborines / The Vinyl Stitches - 10 April 2010, Notting Hill Arts Club

The sun is shining! The streets are full of alarmingly under-dressed people!! The pasty Winter-featured people of Britain are so desperate for it to be summer that they have decided en masse that it IS. Meanwhile, in a dark basement in West London, a crowd has gathered to pretend that it is actually 1966 and they are hanging in NYC. This is El Presidente’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable brought to you (us) by Fortuna Pop! The walls dance with projections of Warhol films as DJ Lemmy Caution plays a Velvets themed set (occasionally at the wrong speed). I am amused by the projection of the ‘Chelsea Girl’ record sleeve which happens to be shining onto a bit of wall that has a sticker in the shape of a speech bubble saying ‘Yo!’ It looks like Nico, being all smack-sultry, gaze cast moodily downwards, is greeting us in an incongruous manner. Ha ha!

The Vinyl Stitches are a Nuggets box set incarnate. They have the look; bowl-cut bass player with op-art tee-shirt, singer in pointy red Chelsea boots, v. cool drummer in beat girl black accessorised with rarver groovy pendant and belt, and they have the sound. Oh yes, they have the sound. Crunchy garage played hard and fast, swinging around nastily irresistible guitar riffs – just how I like it. Songs are short and sharp, studded with get primitive howls, kicking the corpses of The Seeds and The Shadows Of Knight, The Cramps and The Count Five.

Next on are The Tamborines who are on mighty fine form, their set a little less abrasive than the last couple of times I’ve seen them, less Stooges vicious, more sweetly Velvetsy. Not that they don’t make a lot of noise, mind.

Between bands Nat from Sonic Cathedral plays some splendid records. Later, he’ll do that thing where he keeps playing another good song whenever you go to leave, ‘Hang on, let’s just hear The Third Bardo. Ooh, now it’s The Byrds…’etc.

Simon Love announces that they were going to play a whole set of Velvet Underground songs, but they couldn’t be arsed, so we make do with opener ‘Guess I’m Falling In Love’ which blams out very pleasingly. The rest of the set is pop art with added tits, as behind the band naked bodies writhe on film. Some of The Loves are decked in ‘behold our Cale-style coolness!’ shades, whilst Alice sports an excellent dress and attacks her keyboard with gusto. Highlight of the set is ‘Bubblegum’ ‘accidentally’ segueing into ‘December Boy’. The latter is a pop epic with shades of: ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ (yikes!), ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ (cripes!), Big Star (yay!) and a John Hughes film soundtrack (blimey!). It incorporates a woo! anthem! key change and is unfeasibly catchy. It’s gonna be the next single – coming to your ears soon!