Blood Red Shoes - Fire Like This

There are two of them, just two. Yet they are able to produce the noise of dozen men. Imagine a group of rowdy teens on a Friday night wielding guitars and drums and exercising hoarse vocal cords. Never has this noise sounded so good.

The Album title is fitting; as the album progresses the heat radiates. Its confrontational music, bound to flare up the synthetic anger of a mosh pit. The lead single “Light It Up” has a steady introduction preparing you for the riotous chorus. Prickly guitars, lawless drums, rebellious vocals all meshed to form something like a modern day punk song. The song is a convincing call to arms; Laura Mary Carter’s screaming of the track title conjures up your inner pyromaniac.

They have been written off as rebels without a cause constantly complaining about their angst ridden lives. This album does nothing to appease the critics and neither should it. They stay true to their roots and by changing their style they wouldn’t be the same Blood Red Shoes. What BRS fans want to hear is battle; every note has to be a fight, every word a hint of conflict. The proclaiming of ‘I can’t stand it, everybody out of hear’ on “It Is Happening” keeps to the BRS formula. “When We Wake” leads you into a false sense of security with the morose introduction but half way through the cantankerous musicianship begins.  The difference in this song is that Carter sings the lyrics rather than shouts reflecting a melancholic anger: ‘in the end is this all we can ask for’. There isn’t a song to be hated, but maybe a critique of the length of “Colour Fade” (7:08) which appears out of place on this fast-paced album.

Their influences are obvious: imagine the love child of anti-pop Nirvana and Doolittle Pixies with Brit-Pop bands as distant relatives. Yet they manage not to abuse these influences. The Pixies ‘quiet LOUD’ hybrid has been violated many times yet they are able to use this nugget of influence and create an even quieter quiet and louder loud, “One More Empty Chair” is an example of this.

The music has not changed from their debut effort Box of Secrets. Rather they have developed providing us with tighter play, more angst and in my humble opinion, better songs throughout the album. This album is an excellent listen.  The Brighton twosome have made created one of the best releases of the year so far. 


Listen to: Light It Up, When We Wake, Count Me Out, Heart Sink , Follow the Lines
9/10

Review: Foals - Total Life Forever

Our Foals are All Grown Up.

From the first note of the track one, to the last of track eleven, you would not be a fool for thinking Foals are an entirely different band. Their debut "Antidotes" propelled them to indie fame as htey graced the cover of the NME. With Total Life Forever, we are served with a drastic and important departure from their first effort. 

The change is emotion and it is raw. In 2008 we filed foals under 'fun listen', 'party music' 'hedonist anthems'. But with TLF the new found sense of sensitivity and rawness exude from bar to bar. Blue Blood is a casing point: it has the most beautifully simplistic intro that exemplifies the increased delicacy in Yannis Phillipakis’ voice. forty seconds in there is a hint (just a hint) of Foals of the past – syncopation, staccato guitars and all. But,  where their first effort was entirely robotic, rigid and kinetic, TLF is sentimental, moving and fragile.

Foals have added another aspect to their game to support their new found affection. Lyrics are undoubtedly more important completing their fresh dynamic. Antidotes had words, yes, but words without depth. Writing a song in French about Andy Roddick’s serve did fit with the two-dimensional aesthetic of the first album with instrument and voice as focal points. But some prefer a listen with more feeling so a third dimension is needed: meaning. Yannis explores “identity, heartbreak, loss and Mike Tyson” to quote the man himself and while the sporting reference remains, the song in question ‘Black Gold’ permeates the general inspiration of the song by examining feelings of nostalgia and identity “they buried the gold, your ancestry’s sold and left”. 

For ardent “Antidotes” fans, this album may take a while to get used to. Some may write this album off as a mundane effort; Foals have always been a band to get you in the mood for reckless fun and frolics. But they are quickly becoming a band to make you think. The groove-funk style is still there "Miami" shows the 'fun' side of Foals, but what we are witnessing is a band exploring the conceptual. There is no question that Foals can play instruments but this is not what makes a band. The best have the ability to take their talent and use it to reflect the abstract in ways that discussion or debate cannot. Music is not just in itself but for itself and Foals have successfully intertwined their talent and emotion showing their collective progression. Total Life Forever surpasses their first jab creating an album that is cohesive, balanced and beautiful. One of the best albums of the year so far!!

Listen to: Alabaster, Blue Blood, What Remains, Spanish Sahara, This Orient, Black Gold



8.5/10

The New - Two Door Cinema Club

Two Door Cinema Club are an awesome indie listen. I first heard Two Door Cinema Club on Zane Lowe's Show. He played Undercover Martyn which oozes dance floor potential. Anyone who says nothing good comes out of Northern Ireland is wwrrrooonng!!

Label: Kitsune Music
Album: Tourist History OUT NOW!

The Drums: A Transatlantic Musical Love Affair

They could be an all male sixties pop group. They could be an English band from the seventies. In fact they are The Drums, they are American and this is 2010. Performing classic robotic dancing that would make Ian Curtis proud, featuring vocals reflecting Morrissey’s jumpy, yet gentle tone, and even a Shangri-Las-esque lyrical structure, they are most recent American anglophiles since The Killers. 

Their latest EP entitled ‘Summertime’ is concentrated in influence from ‘the Brits across the pond’ and sixties pop. ‘Lets Go Surfing’, which apparently has nothing to do with surfing at all, presents us with quick paced clattered guitars akin to the style of Johnny Marr. ‘Make You Mine’ is a song rooted in sixties pop with cutesy Beach Boy whistling, perfectly timed hand clapping and a ‘call and response’ pattern between Jonathan Pierce’s sensitive cry of ‘sleeping in the kiii-tchen’ and a echoic female reply resulting in a strange yet endearing hybrid between black gospel and pop.

No doubt, The Drums are a revival band, meshing the likes of The Smiths and The Shangri-La’s in one pleasing melodic stew. It’s fair to say The Drums live through their influences. But with their nostalgic appreciation of music been-and- gone and being a part of scene plagued by Indie fakes, The Drums are marketed as being original and it would be unfair to take this away from them. They are a fun listen reflecting timeless teenage emotion, simultaneously liked by twenty-something rock ‘n’ roll hipsters, producing songs destined for indie dance floors.

The future looks bright for the Brooklyn band. Named as one of the British BBC’s Sounds of 2010, suggests that they will receive greater attention than any other underground band this year. The Drums are here to stay. But despite critical acclaim, It’s fairly likely that their retro sound and niche look will not create quite the hype garnered by The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys or The Strokes. Like other bands who have found critical acclaim, The XX and Animal Collective come to mind, their music is reserved only for people with particular interest in Indie music. But with further listening and a full length debut out in July, it will be interesting to see if the band will cling to their nostalgia or pertain to the 21^st Century Indie scene, creating a sound that can fit in with the guitar driven bands of today.

www.myspace.com/thedrumsforever

©

Too Many Man...On the Indie Scene

It’s 2006 and a band, with a sourly underwhelming name is set to release a debut album that will reinvigorate the British indie scene since the demise of Brit-Pop. Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not by Arctic Monkeys has all the makings of an epic album: searing guitars, riotous drums, poignant lyrics and a brazen, honest northern voice putting British bands who try, and fail, to emulate the American accent to shame. They represent everything that could be great about British music. It is only fitting that their album is set to succeed in abundance in Britain yet underwhelm American audiences who prefer Cowell’s new minion Leona Lewis and all other schmoozy X-Factor and Britain’s-Got-Talent-And-Overweight-Mad-People types (not that I’m trying to conflate Susan Boyle with all slightly fat and emotionally imbalanced British people)

But a problem occurs when great bands who single-handedly, well…together with the media, create a scene: carbon copies appear. And like burning a copy of a CD for your mate or attempting your nana’s ‘famous’ Yorkshire pudding recipe, it’s never the same as the original. It lacks the charm, uniqueness and all that makes the original special. But any boy or girl who has yearned to hear their song on the radio or play sell out gigs is willing to imprint a group who has already reached this level hoping that someday people will see in them what they saw in the original…and unfortunately this happens. The British audience is all too willing to accept sound-alike’s as ‘the real deal’. This creates an opportunity for sweaty teenage wannabe rock stars and major record labels.

So, when a scene like noughties British Indie appeared, northern boys stopped being northern boys and began emulating Alex Turner’s uniquely awkward yet endearing charm and started seeing things that they had never seen before like ‘people changing when the sun went down’ and that despite what they had been told they were not from New York but from Rotherham, a point that needed repetition and annunciation in case anyone thought otherwise. Behold the ascendency of The Northern Band: The Pigeon Detectives, Milburn, Little Man Tate…need I say more? It may be harsh to point out that the title of the latter’s second album (yes, they managed a second) ‘Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy’ perhaps should have been addressed more closely. I suggest something worth having is authentic and not a rip-off from a counter-part. Surprisingly, Little Man Tate and Milburn met their, almost predictable demise, whilst the former found platinum (?!) success and live to survive another album or two, neither being as successful as the first.

Such is the nature of the British mainstream music industry that indie leeches have a sell-by date. PEOPLE GET BORED and this is why scenes never survive but the great, like Arctic Monkeys live to tell the tale. 2009 saw Brit-rock slipping out the charts replaced by the grime-pop types like Chipmunk and Tinchy Stryder. Not the best trade off in my humblest opinion but all these little bands who dreamed of success at the height of Oasis in their hay, ceased to exist. There are just too many bands trying to be something they are not. Despite the thousands of records a copy-cat indie band may sell today, authenticity prevails in the long run. Who remembers ‘Kula Shaker’ or ‘Menswear’ from the Brit-Pop fad; who remembers ‘Paw’ from Grunge days? This proves just because little girls are poring over your scruffy hair and Topman get up now, doesn’t mean they’ll care about you when they're 20 and a new scene appears.