1-20 (unordered):

Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
HEALTH – Get Color
Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Fever Ray – Self-titled
Amadou en Mariam – Welcome to Mali
The XX – XX
The Twilight Sad – Forget the Night Ahead
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
John Doe & The Sadies – Country Club
Hanggai – Introducing Hanggai
Max Richter – Memoryhouse (reissue)
Harmonic 313 – When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
James Blackshaw – The Glass Bead Game
Zelienople – Give It Up
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
The Phantom Band – Checkmate Savage
Blakroc – Self-titled

21-50 (unordered):

Malcolm Middleton – Waxing Gibbous
De Rosa – Prevention
Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue
jj – no.2
Liam Finn & Eliza Jane – Champagne in Seashells
Hannu – Hintergarten
The Beatles - Remasters
PJ Harvey & John Parish – A Woman A Man Walked By
Aidan Moffat and the Best-Ofs – How to Get to Heaven From Scotland
Bugskull – Communication
Haushcka – Snowflakes and Carwrecks
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Self-titled
Roosbeef - Ze Willen Wel je Jond Aaien Maar Niet Met je Praten
Telepathe – Dance Mother
Tim Hecker – An Imaginary Country
Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications
The Big Pink – A Brief History of Love
Nosaj Thing – Drift
Dizzee Rascal – Tongue N Cheek
Mirah – (a)spera
Andy Moor & DJ/Rupture – Patches
Lord Cut Glass – Self-titled
Dan Deacon – Bromst
My Latest Novel – Deaths and Entrances
Florence & The Machine - Lungs
The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love
Condo Fucks - Fuckbook
Julian Plenti – Julian Plenti is… Skyscraper
Baroness – Blue Record

There’s a sense of guilt for not writing as much as I should recently. But any feelings of guilt are compounded by not yet writing about The Twilight Sad and how they’ve been my band of the past few months. To the extent that I had to import their CD from America before its European release, and to the extent that I listen to it on average four or five times a week (I rarely endure any prolonged train journeys without it). And then there’s the fact I saw them put on one of the best live shows I’m sure to see all year, and I still managed not to write about them.

Fortunately, they have set the rest of the blog world alight this year instead, possibly even more in the US than in the UK, which is pretty impressive for a Scottish band. I wish I could play catch up by giving away every single track of their debut album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters and forcing you to listen to it, but that seems a tad immoral. Instead I just picked a random song (I could have opted for any of them, really) and if you need more convincing just head to every other mp3 blog.

The studio stuff doesn’t quite represent the live sound, which is more like a deathly wall of noise. Their show at Oran Mor in Glasgow back in June was pretty remarkable, what with the audience singing along right out of blocks -pretty impressive for the first hometown headlining show. Course, the band were wasted, using alcohol to try dull the nerves, and I was told afterwards by someone who watched them every night on their US tour that he’d never seen them play so badly. But the rest of us were simply blown away by the experience and I was seriously surrounded by grinning fans down the front. It was easy to just close your eyes and visualise them headlining festivals and huge shows - and, of course, the star quality of singer James Graham, who’s capable of vocalising fire, certainly helps.

So yes, I recommend getting in on the game now, before everyone else does.

Love, that’s what I feel for this band. Not “they were cool”. Not “you should listen to them”. Not even “I hope you like them”.

Within the space of a single album, they managed to carve out a sound that was completely original, completely them; I love their ingenuity, their unerring beauty, the simplicity and unassuming depth, their unworldliness. They sounded and still sound like no-one else. The sparseness of their arrangements, Alison Statton’s gorgeous, lonely, reverbing voice; someone once told me they loved the “symmetry” of Philip Moxham’s basslines, and normally I’d set fire to someone for saying that sort of thing, but in this case, he’s absolutely right. The balance and simplicity of their music is utterly bewitching. It feels somehow natural and calm, but running right through it is a kind of under-the-skin sadness that just won’t leave you alone. One thing that’s made me happy is that with all the re-releases this album has had, they’ve never changed the original cover, which, along with the title, Colossal Youth, has a kind of grandiosity and classical feel, like it’s always been there, waiting for you to discover it, and you just found it growing in the ground.

But don’t get me wrong, this is no Starbucks organic sigh-into-your-coffee feelingsy music to put next to the horrors of Jack Johnson or Nick Drake, who, like old wood, has been reclaimed and turned into something polished and shiny to balance your cup on; in this music’s quiet sadness, there’s an inner core of steel - a revelling defiance in their unpolished but perfectly formed songs. There’s not a second of indulgence here, no solos, no wasted drumbeats, no trilling for decoration. It’s, as I say, just perfect in its simplicity. I can’t put it better than that, sorry. No point screeching on when they didn’t. Go and buy it, or steal it, if you do that instead.

If you decide to go legal, you’ll have to buy it on 2 July, obviously, as it’s not out yet.

Buy.

I’m a big fan of Pulp; always have been. There’s something about Jarvis Cocker’s intelligence and need to tell a story that I’ve always admired, his easy wit and the fact he can descend into self parody sometimes absolutely shamelessly just makes me like him even more. Anyone who can sing in a magician’s whisper, “Nouga-a-a-at! And…caramel!” and still move me more than almost anyone else I know is worth knowing.

I’ve written before, ages ago, about why David’s Last Summer from His N Hers is one of my favourite songs, it reduces me to bits if I think about it too much, how they capture so beautifully a change in your outlook, your life, your existence, when you first take steps away from what you’ve always known and have to face up to responsibility, becoming an adult, even though you haven’t really got a clue what any of that means - the utter joy at the fact of existence, with that itch of sadness, a tinge of guilt, even, at how it’s just really a series of endings, one after the other. And Jarvis does it all the time. That line in Dishes from This Is Hardcore, banal in itself as read but so warmly delivered, you feel he’s singing only to you: “And I know I’ll never touch the stars, cos stars belong up in heaven, and the earth is where we are…” and finding total peace in that admission, rather than more boringly seeing it as being a moment of defeat, is perfect. It’s one of those lines that somehow manages to mine down under my skin right into me, I find myself mouthing it when I hear the song, it pricks through the, as Liz Phair called it when she was still good, on Nashville, “slick divide”. But Nashville’s a whole other story.

So I stumbled across Wickerman from We Love Life. I like that album, in the main - there’s some dull stuff on it, but it’s got Weeds, Sunrise and Trees on it, all lovely, and it’s more muted and contented, a perfectly good ending to a great group. I would hear the first line of Wickerman when it came on at random on my mp3 player - “Just behind the station…before you reach the traffic island…” and it never really engaged me before. But on the bus in from the airport a month ago, I bothered to leave it and let it carry on - “..a river runs, through a concrete channel. I took you there once, I think it was after the Leadmill. The water was dirty and smelled of industrialisation… Little mesters coughing their lungs up, and globules the colour of tomato ketchup. But it flows. Yeah, it flows.” And the images keep pouring in, as he takes you underneath the city, following the dirty river; it reminds me of how I feel about my home town.

Walking around my old home town, the quiet of it, the fact you could be in all sorts of places there all alone; you forget that sometimes, when you live in a big city. You can be somewhere and be alone. Just you, a stinking and barely moving brook, a motorway and railings. Or going back to childhood haunts and seeing how they compare when in miniature, almost, because you changed, you grew up, you saw things you could compare it to, while it did nothing but just stay there. Whether it’s the sugar-soil-sulphur hills we used to go and play on, with our own versions of dramas involving bigger boys, adults behaving strangely in places they thought we couldn’t see them, falling down hills, climbing, bikes, fishing; the parks and overgrown places you weren’t sure you were allowed on, but went anyway, or the safer confines of front gardens and front rooms. I went back to the park area where we used to play about a year ago and as expected, it was smaller, but lay pretty much as it had when I was a kid. The hills were still there but even calling them hills was pushing it; the brook next to the canal was a lot nearer than I remembered, the route out of the park that [info]mrstevie and I would take when going on insane mile-after-mile walks was a lot longer than I remembered. There were dedicated benches each with a bunch of plastic-wrapped flowers sitting as though thrown on, in the middle of a clearing. And…single men everywhere. The place I used to play’s become a cruising ground, it seems. A quite paltry one, but one nonetheless. I walked up to the Nine Arches, texting [info]megazoid, and watched people walking along the railway tracks from the ground, one waved at me, I waved back. I stood under the arches and read the graffiti about all the people whose names ended in Z and were 110% Fit.

In the other end of the town, you walk out of a small wood adjoining the lake straight into a cornfield, then within seconds you’re under the motorway, someone seemingly, from the subject matter, in the correctional facility down the road, has written a pornographic story in large marker pen on the railing top next to another stinking and stagnant stretch of water which somehow has graffiti on the other side, despite there being no means of getting over there. And then you’re out the other side and up a hill, watching golfers move between the trees in the distance, hearing the motorway, completely impassable, and ending your journey before it’s started, right above you, and I distinctly remember hoping no-one else was coming under that low, dark, smelly bridge; the country’s most boring lake and busiest motorway separated by a dirty story that must have taken hours to produce in the dark. Seediness, greenery and solitude always seem to go together in small towns.

I don’t have memories of romance in my home town like Jarvis does, of the “child’s toy horse ride that played such a ridiculously tragic tune”; opportunities were always more imminent and even brutal than romantic. There wasn’t really room for it in Newton-le-Willows, and I didn’t have the courage to embrace romance there, and courage would certainly have been what you needed. But there’s something about this song, the yet-again joyous sadness and the wonder at things you have literally lived with for so long, your whole life, that they seem just like a low hum in the background. I love how certain songs suddenly turn up that volume on that hum and reveal it to be so much more rich and tuneful and varied and surprising; it just pulls me back to it all the time.

Buy

website: http://www.65daysofstatic.com/

Ah, the might of the 65days. You can’t beat a bit of their static electo rock explosions. They were the best band I saw live at Motel Mozaique 2006 and they’ve released three full albums now and none have had a weak spot. Well, I’m not totally convinced about evolutionary progression either, but they still have the power to thrill me with their instrumental post rock electro-programmed noise. Some token bio if needed (cos you know how much I hate having to write out facts):

“65daysofstatic decided to slow down and take its time in making their third full-length record, The Destruction of Small Ideas. Though One Time For All Time was hailed as the “most vital, enthralling and unrelenting record of 2005” by Drowned in Sound, 65days are back with an even more polished product in hand. The electronics are integrated further into the mix, adding to, rather than distracting from, the epic organic guitars: “you can turn it up on your stereo and it’ll sound really, fucking, nice…” The band has played in front of thousands across Europe and Japan, and this beast of a record is sure to gain them the same sort of attention in the US. Though they had to kick a Scottish after-school dance troupe out of their own auditorium to record the grand piano, 65daysofstatic are quite proud to have you listen to their latest effort.”

We are immensely proud of the four albums that we made over the past seven years. We hope that they continue to grow in your hearts. We plan to honour and celebrate the beautiful friendships we have made along the way with these final shows over the summer.

MAY
30th Aberdeen Musichall*
31st Edinburgh Potterrow*

JUNE
1st Glasgow Barrowlands*
16th Glasgow QMU
23rd Hurricane Festival. Scheesel, Germany
24th Southside Festival. Neuhausen, Germany

JULY
27th Omas Teich Festival. Grossefehn, Germany

AUGUST
31st Connect Festival. Inverary, Scotland.

*Main support to Biffy Clyro

We would like you all to consider our headline show at the QMU in Glasgow to be our farewell UK show and to view The Connect Festival in Inverary as a damn fine opportunity for everyone to see The Jesus And Marychain.

The Omas Teich festival is ironically our first festival headline slot. We would love to say goodbye to as many of our German friends as possible here. Flowers will be graciously accepted at all performances.

Finally we want to thank you all for listening to our music and coming to our shows over the years. You have given us a glimpse of something truly special.

Aereogramme. x.”

Well, it’s not like I didn’t see this coming at all. Having been following the band through most of their career arc, I’ve been fortunate enough to have seen them live many, many times in many different venues and cities and countries. Every album has seen a progression for the better and I know the music has affected a lot of people. But sometimes that’s not enough to fund a business that pays any bills, let alone the bills.

So I’ll travel back for the Glasgow show. I’d already considered doing so, as I was longing to see the band one more time in front of the home audience–it really is a world away from the audiences I stand amongst in Holland, and normally for the better. There’s not much chance of me heading to any festivals, and I’m not sure that’s the way I’d like to see the band anyway. A good show in Glasgow in suffice.

Anyway, since it finally forced my hand to get back to posting on the site, I figured I better include some token music. And since this is what the band is doing this summer, here it is…

mp3: Aereogramme - Dissolve

Those lucky few who know me, know that I strongly dislike pop music. Especially – American or Western top 40. Not only do I despise it, I also rue and lament it. The same corporate monster that created this music nurtures it, feeds it, and makes sure that the machine of consumerism and capitalism is running smoothly, thoroughly crushing any breath of individuality and creativity in modern music. So it is in this vein that I make the following confession. Brace yourself.
I am addicted to Japanese pop music. I know I know. In a lot of ways it’s worse than what we have going on here in the US: bands are often cultivated en masse, great, corporate (typically television corporations) greenhouses where bands are literally planted. One after another they are produced, all bubble gum and frothing over with Disneyesque innocence and charm. They rule morning television, with often just a turnstile at their core – much like Menudo was in the 80’s; you age out and either move on to a ready-made solo career, or you fade into obscurity. But that’s not all of them.
Some bands are taking the Western pop formula and rewriting it, reworking it. Where once there was an homage to the 80’s and 90’s boy bands and spice girls, there is now an ever-expanding alternative that is changing the face of pop music as we know it. It’s pop with substance. Oh my head.

Take Nirgilis for example. You would classify them as alternative pop. They write their own music (Gasp!). They play their own instruments (Gasp!). They formed in university, and have remained a band at core despite having had no record deal or industry support, and with more than 20 members having come and gone in the nearly ten years they worked for a hit. More importantly, despite the electronic bleeps reminiscent of 1980’s house, techno and pop, they are good. Really good. Their sound is comprised of an assortment of loops layered over guitars and drum kit, and are reminiscent of everything from Rilo Kiley and the Fiery Furnaces to the club hit of the week. The lead singer often sounds like a Japanese Kay Hanley, with a greater range and decent lung capacity to boot. Their hooks are solid, songs are catchy, and each album has a song on it for your every mood.
Nirgilis is at the forefront of a new music “movement” sweeping through Asia of late. Called mash-rise, or better translated, mashed-up, it involves taking two entirely different songs and combining them into one song. It’s not quite sampling, it’s not even homogenous – both songs (and sometimes more) are oft played concurrent to each other: at the same time to the same music. These mash-ups can either be two songs written by the same entity, or an original paired with another popular song.
A perfect example of this is their international hit single “Sakura (Cherry Blossom)”, which many western folks may know as an opening theme to the popular anime “Eureka 7”. A really infectious chorus makes you almost forget the operatic rendition of “Amazing Grace” running through it. (And if that gets to be too much, the Sakura single features the non-mash-rise version for your auditory pleasure.)
Nirgilis has two albums and an assortment of EP singles. The mp3’s above are from their album New Standard. They are mild compared to some of their other records. Their latest album Girl features Peter Hook of New Order, and samples are currently streaming at their website. (Be forewarned though, they haven’t an English-language home on the web.)
So what with my current musical excursion, you can be sure to expect more from me in the near future on Japanese pop (and not so pop, I like some perdy weird stuff). Until then, enjoy Nirgilis.

Buy.

Throughout it all, Andrew Bird has been a helpful factor. Maybe sometime I’ll write about his recent show in Brussels, or blackmail Dermot into doing so. And hopefully sometime I can write about Armchair Apocrypha, his new album, which I adore more than I ever thought I would/could.

So I’m rather excited about him returning to NL in May, possibly Dosh-less, though this doesn’t seem to have been fully established yet:

22/05/07 : Rotown - Rotterdam (NL)
23/05/07 : Tivoli (De Helling) - Utrecht (NL)
24/05/07 : Paradiso - Amsterdam (NL)

website: http://www.gargleblastrecords.com

I’ve had the Desert Hearts album Hotsy Totsy Nagasaki since last year and have completely failed to mention it. Feeling slightly guilty about that, above is a download link for their new single (temporarily free).