If Carlsberg wrote a song.....it would be the second best song in the world.
louisedistras.co.uk
Monday, September 21, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Album Review: The Decline: Resister
The Decline
'Resister;
(PEE RECORDS)
Some frenetic rabble rousing fury and nostalgic chaos from the Australian skate punks
Some frenetic rabble rousing fury and nostalgic chaos from the Australian skate punks
Skate punk is a sub-genre that combines the breakneck pace of melodic hardcore with the catchy youthful bounce of pop punk, giving it that very solid wall of guitar riffs and powerful drumming. It's not a new concept of cross-genre music by any means and it's a much used, overcrowded one thanks to the popularity of bands like NOFX, Suicidal Tendencies, Pennywise, Sick Of It All and Lagwagon who, through various personal adaptions of their own interpretation, generated the global reputation of skate punk music and, in turn, inspired a million other bands to follow suit. Some of those bands became really good and some became really not so. Australian band The Decline (with this album being the reference point from where my opinion is based) seem to be of the former.
Things here really couldn't begin any better than they do with the short but powerful opener NEW AGAIN, a song that lasts less than two minutes yet manages to hammer out a formidable entrance, bristling with energy and utter immediacy. It's quickly followed by the effective stop/start/stop guitar work that begins recent single GIVING UP IS A GATEWAY DRUG, a great song with little flourishes of inventive brilliance - with its change in chord pace and sudden vocal dips. It's a showcase for incredible drumming on faster paced THE BLURST OF TIMES pounding a symphony of melodic and frenzied skate punk percussion that ends with a clever guitar solo.
There's a heavier sounding hardcore launch for frenetic CAMBERWELL STREET, the ever restless punk rock urgency is skippered by some well pitched melodic partnering....again that ever present intuitive musicianship gathers things up and brings it together with a slick competence.WRECKING BALL has pace and it punches and snaps its way forward with aggressive punk energy, the crunching guitars and fiery attitude are intermixed with melodic vocal combinations...similarly the malevolent YOU'RE NOT THE WAITRESS and final track START AGAIN.
This may not be the album that will go on to inspire a new direction, but I'm pretty sure that is something this band are well aware of anyway. They seem genuine enough for what they do to ever care for or need such bloated accolades of superficial wank egoism....and it's a pretty good album nonetheless. Awash with neat guitar chords and huge rabble rousing bursts of sound it's kept mostly simple concise and to the absolute point....utilising their skilled musicianship at precise moments to suddenly steer things in a different direction...delightful bodyswerves you didn't see coming that completely change an entire song in that instant. Far from being some copycat fraudsters of a work already made they are a band delivering a perfectly executed homage to their influences with plenty of their own originality on view....just to prove their point.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Video Playlist: Back Street Hangout
A 15 TRACK VIDEO PLAYLIST OF THE FINEST SLEAZEBALL GARAGE PUNK ROCK LO-FI TRASH SCUZZ ROCKABILLY SURF POP.... THAT WILL LEAVE YOU IN THE DIRT!
THE BLOODY HOLLIES: I DREAM OF BEES
Rollicking guitar-driven big sound punk and blues
OBLIVIANS: CALL THE POLICE
A stomping fuzz-punk holocaust of raw garage trash blues
DEMOLITION DOLL RODS: GET IT ON
Primitive bluesy punk sex rock and roll
THE DETROIT COBRAS: CHA CHA TWIST
A self assured rock and roll guitar/drums meandering giant
SPEEDBALL BABY: PIN UP COWBOY
Fractured rockabilly/ gutter blues hybrid
REVEREND BEAT MAN: JESUS CHRIST TWIST
A one-man blues trash scuzz rock band
URBAN JUNIOR: MAN ON THE RUN
A rollercoastering swill of electro clash garage synth disco punk monstering
DADDY LONG LEGS: DEATH TRAIN BLUES
Late night alehouse harmonica rock and blues
JC SATAN: DRAGONS
Garage punk/thrash insanity cranked up to full power
GOLDEN TRIANGLE: NEON NOOSE
Catchy art/garage rock noise monsters
WOVEN BONES: I'VE GOTTA GET
Scuzzy, snarling, blissed out noise-pop
FUNGI GIRLS: GLARE
Surf-fused lo-fi garage punk rock
COACHWHIPS: EXTINGUISH ME
Stripped back rock and roll distortion
NO BUNNY: GIVE IT TO ME
One man, hook laden, pop/punk onslaught
THE COATHANGERS: HURRICANE
Tuneful, all female garage punks
Tuesday, August 04, 2015
Sunday, August 02, 2015
Cilla Black R.I.P
Cilla Black sadly died today at her holiday home in Marbella, Spain. She was 72. Best remembered for her successful television career hosting two of Saturday nights biggest shows Surprise Surprise and Blind Date where she quickly established herself in the hearts of the nation. Previous to her TV fame Cilla Black was a 60's pop star after being signed by Beatles manager Brian Epstein in 1963. Her debut single Love of the Loved was written by Lennon and McCartney. She had two number one hits the following year with You're My World and Anyone Who Had A Heart. Cilla went on to release 14 albums throughout her successful pop career before moving into television in the early 70's. Rest In Peace.
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Sunday, July 19, 2015
6 Online Music Documentaries You Should Watch.
IT'S SLADE
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A 50 minute documentary made by the BBC in 1999 with lots of television clips, live concert extracts, backstage coverage and solo interviews with each of the four members.
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MARC BOLAN THE FINAL WORD
Excellent in-depth documentary on Marc Bolan's life and career.
Archive footage and contributions from fellow glam rock stars
SLIPKNOT: RANK OUTSIDERS
Enigmatic metal band are documented via rare footage, interviews, news reports and contributions from friends with none of the controversy left out.
MADNESS: TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
Autobiographical depiction of the band from their beginnings as pub band The Invaders to their eventual chart success and global stardom. Featuring live gig clips and a selection of Madness hits. Fans of the band will love it.
CRASS: THERE IS NO AUTHORITY BUT YOURSELF
The 70mins documentary traces the history of anarcho punk band CRASS through archive footage of live performances and interviews with the bands former members Penny Rimbaud, Steve Ignorant and Gee Vaucher
THE STONE ROSES: MADE OF STONE
With previously unseen footage Made Of Stone is a fascinating journey through the life of one of the most influential and innovative bands in the history of British music as they prepare for their 2012 reunion tour culminating in a triumphant homecoming Manchester performance in front of 75,000 fans.
Thursday, July 09, 2015
Album Review: Sleaford Mods
Sleaford Mods
'Key Markets'
(Harbinger Sound)
The deeply perceptive outrage of a skilled social commentator
The deeply perceptive outrage of a skilled social commentator
The socially conscious observational elegies of Sleaford Mods are hybrid relatives of the descriptive essaying found in the romanticised Englishness of The Kinks...a specific, distinctive style of picturesque lyricism, a huge photo-album of narratives almost, that can be easily viewed and interpreted for what they are. Moments are usually fleeting..but to ensure those fleeting moments remain is where the reputations of good and bad lyricists are built. It's a method of writing popularised in recent years by Ian Dury, Alex Turner and Pete Doherty...as one might update a diary, endless sequels to advancing modernity, triumphs of a past still culturally significant in this ever changing Britain...Today's most relevant of chroniclers, without question, are Nottingham post-punk/hip hop duo Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn...best known as Sleaford Mods.
Their third album 'proper' Key Markets is as previous two Austerity Dogs (2013) and Divide And Exit (2014) were. Jason Williamson's enraged dystopian monologues are brilliantly precise and show a sharp intellect for discourse...kicking and prodding at the face of a broken society with venomous grammatical zig-zagging. Andrew Fearn's minimal orchestration of strong, low toned bass lines and skeletal discordant beats is what completes that compelling curveball and sets them slightly apart from the rest. Latest single No One's Bothered is a catchy, quick paced, punk driven bluster of exasperated irritation...'You're trapped? Me too! Alienation, No one's bothered!' chants Williamson with swiping sarcasm, above the relentless drumbeat and throbbing bass, in a dig at human behaviours fading sense of connection under capitalism. In another withering analytical jab, this time on the marching swagger of Bronx In A Six he lashes out from the slow handclap of a beat 'You wonder why you've got no mates? You pretend to be proud of your own culture, while simultaneously not giving two fucks about your own culture, what culture? FUCK CULTURE, all you chinny wine tasters die in boxes like the rest of us wasters'. The bone rattling fury inspires such imaginative put-downs you start to wonder if the devil might have breathed a howling demon into his vernacular mouth.
The sashaying groove funk of Silly Me is the laid back, slowest song on the album while Tarantula Deadly Cargo with its post-punk thrum is a fragmented cinematic transition. But its the enraged political conviction of Face To Faces that brings out his best, and most frenzied bout of uncompromising vitriolic wordsmithery yet....'‘Nick Clegg wants another chance. Really? This daylight robbery is now so fucking hateful. It’s accepted by the vast majority..In chains, in our death and in our failure to grab hold of what fucking little we have left we have lost sight, And in the loss of sight we have lost our fucking minds, ALRIGHT??!.... Genius. Pure and utter!
What endears Sleaford Mods to the people is the subject matter of their songs and the fact its real. Most of us can relate to some if not all of what they sing about. The unfussy, no frills pub philosophies, dole que politics and council estate manners. It's that spilled beer and cheap tobacco ambience of dead end destinations where streets are narrow, most roads will lead nowhere...and that very British of traditions to resent the rich and nurture anti-establishment hatred.. alienating us from anyone with power.
They’re not canvassing to be the spokesmen of this generation.. merely voicing their own frustrations and dislikes and if they mirror our own then it shall be a shared mutual distaste that brings us together…nothing more. Jason Williamson will always be an outburst waiting to happen. Andrew Fearn will always let his beats do the talking. Sleaford Mods are the best band in the country.
They’re not canvassing to be the spokesmen of this generation.. merely voicing their own frustrations and dislikes and if they mirror our own then it shall be a shared mutual distaste that brings us together…nothing more. Jason Williamson will always be an outburst waiting to happen. Andrew Fearn will always let his beats do the talking. Sleaford Mods are the best band in the country.
Sleaford Mods Homepage
Written by: Alan Baillie
Published at : Subba Cultcha.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
No Manifesto: A Film About Manic Street Preachers
Who's responsible - you fucking are
It's been twenty something years since the mouthy neo-glam punks in eyeliner burst through the walls of our world with their youth and fury yelling their mandates and lecturing us with their iconic riff-powered protest songs, Their precocious intellect composed misanthropic dogma for revolutionists and endorsed the disenchanted to rouse from apathetic slumber. The songs were lashed with despair, hate, passion, revolt, love and vigorous two fisted aggression (now you say you know how we feel / but dont fall in love cos we hate you still) and an orchestra of crunching, spine rattling guitar work narrated with a furious vocal and again the accomplished grammatical nihilism. The brash sloganeers, a fireball of youthful determination armed with menacing politico and the intent to ravage us like a holocaust. They turned pop culture inside out - songs that heaved with political messages, unbroken prose, subtext, literary references and Nietzschean quotes and became more a snarling consumer of culture, a new breed of realism (I laughed when Lennon got shot) Now, nearly 30 years on from their fledgling cockiness Manic Street Preachers are still with us. They have carried each other through the darkness that has clouded them since the sudden disappearance of guitarist/lyricist Richey Edwards in 1995 and are now stalwarts of British music naturally evolving with their own years into a mellower, more content representation of the stirring agitators they once were.
Almost 10 years in the making No Manifesto: A Film About Manic Street Preachers by American director Elizabeth Marcus is the long awaited documentary about the band as chronicled through interviews with almost 100 fans from across the world alongside some archive footage, conversations with each member of the band and live performances from three tours. Through her use of the hand held camera Elizabeth Marcus generates an uncontrived intimacy especially when filming the band in their own personal surroundings and revealing the very ordinary lives they live away from their role in the band. It shows them at their most human - a side the public never get to see. I remember feeling mildly disappointed that they weren't in fact leaders of some anti-establisment non conformist organisation who held meetings once a week in the upstairs room of a pub. But then, if I'm honest..I never really hoped they would be.
No Manifesto: A Film About Manic Street Preachers is out now on DVD and Blue Ray HERE
Written by Alan Baillie for Spin Utopia...June 24 2015.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
The Prodigy feat Sleaford Mods
It's been a while since I posted anything in here - and that's because I have nothing to post - due to personal circumstances. I hope to return soon enough. Until then....feast on this!
http://www.sleafordmods.com/
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Davey Lane.
Best known as lead guitarist of excellent Australian rock band You Am I...Davey Lane released his debut solo album Atonally Young at the end of 2014. This was the second single to be taken from the album. If you aren't already familiar with Davey Lane, or indeed the band You Am I...then I suggest you start digging in....you'll love what you find. You'll love it all.
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Playlist For A Sunday.
The Rifles: When I'm Alone
Milburn: Cheshire Cat Smile
Harrisons: Dear Constable
The Paddingtons: What's The Point In Anything New
Bromheads Jacket: Fight Music For The Fight
The Futureheads: Decent Days And Nights
The Sunshine Underground: Borders
The Libertines: Don't Look Back Into The Sun
The Coral: Bill McCai
The Music: Take The Long Road And Walk It.
Shed Seven: Out By My Side
The Supernaturals: Dung Beetle
The Cigarettes: All We Want Is Your Money
The Lambrettas: Poison Ivy
The Circles: Opening Up
The Jam: News Of The World
Arctic Monkeys: Teddy Picker
Franz Ferdinand: The Fallen
Reverend And The Makers: Shine The Light
Alterkicks: Oh Honey
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Quiet Marauder: A Band You May Never Have Known Existed
Cardiff based Quiet Marauder are a loose collective of eccentric oddball musicians who have been on the go since 2011 playing their madcap, deranged, dizzy headed anti-folk songs to a perplexed but intrigued public. Their debut album 'MEN' was one hundred and eleven tracks long, split into four volumes and featured numerous collaborators making endless bursts of noise from unidentifiable sources. A mountain of oddities and mischievous mentalism. They are as darkly comical as they are creatively clever.
Friday, February 20, 2015
The Smiths: Meat Is Murder: The 30th Anniversary
Meat Is Murder
(Rough Trade)
Feb 1985
The Smiths ruled the world from 1982 -1987. A world in which the plight of the thin skinned and vulnerable was bestowed with solace and facilitated with an empathy never before considered in rock and roll music. For 5 years they fostered the unguarded souls of dear old Britain, giving a voice to the laconic efforts of shyness. They were a government for the crestfallen. Sentinels of the brittle hearted. A rousing call to arms for anyone struggling to find their place in this world. But it wasn’t just the dramatic and poetic who welcomed this sudden liberation of their inner angst. Half the world, and likely more, pronounced The Smiths the most vital development rock music has ever been blessed with. They saved music during the 80’s. Before them the UK music scene was dangerously monotonous and close to duplicating itself with the safety valve of punk rock. The Smiths captivated and stirred a nation with vivid, down to earth lyrics set against a backdrop of shimmering guitar driven anthems and unpretentious balladry.
Morrissey ever the persona of a fading music hall idol dragged from the 50’s, remains one of the most worshipped frontmen to ever occur in modern day rock music. His passion for the gossiping backyard communities which were once the fundamental representation of the north but were destroyed alongside declines in industry, brought a working class inflection to his lyrics. His sentimental interpretation of conventional misfortunes was a perfect canvas for the astonishing imagery created by his words. His lyrical announcements were conflicting and extrinsic against the generic meatiness regarded standard rock and roll in 1982. Everything Morrissey wrote had to be consolidated through music sympathetic enough to not lose any of the essence. Johnny Marr was gifted enough to ensure the balance worked. His musical input enhanced the narration of the lyrics through melodic sentiment. Marr rarely, if ever, misjudged the transport required to transmit a Morrissey lyric sincerely enough. This uncanny perception, alongside the impeccable drumming of Mike Joyce and bass playing of Andy Rourke gave The Smiths their dexterity and magnificence.
Released 30 years ago this month Meat Is Murder, their second studio album, was the harder, darker edge of The Smiths. From vegan rage to mindless violence, everything feels confrontational and emotionally direct right down to the strident pro-vegetarian album title which is immediately discordant, uncomfortable and provoking. A Guerrilla Marketing concept?....possibly. Dogmatic social obstruction?...undoubtedly. This was a tougher sound with tougher subject matter (violence and death being the principal themes) Morrissey, one of the most uncompromising lyricists to ever exist, was never better than when rattling with resent.
It only takes the acidic tirade in the first lines of album opener The Headmaster Ritual for his seething hatred to become immediately apparent..'belligerent ghouls/run Manchester schools/spineless swines/cemented minds/ he sings with blatant deliberation before his utter contempt for the educational system and it's bullying teaching staff spills over into vengeful satire..'sir leads the troops/jealous of youth/ same old joke since 1902/, with everything held together by a stunning Andy Rourke bassline and the gifted complexities of Johnny Marr's lair after lair after lair of incredible guitar playing.The pre-adolescent tale of broken hearts and fairground violence, Rusholme Ruffians, takes it's funky 60's rockabilly bass line from Elvis Presley's 'Marie's The Name' as Morrissey weaves his way through Johnny Marr's acoustic riffs, unfurling his obsession for second hand violence 'a boy is stabbed/and his money is grabbed/ and the air hangs heavy like a dulling wine' as the music, far from being as dark as the subject, skips and bounds with cheerful contradiction...Morrissey's gossiping judgmental swipe 'her skirt ascends for a watching eye/ it's a hideous trait on her mother's side' turning over the bare bones of human fragility with effortless poetic nonchalance. It's the melodrama of youth in all it's broken down desperation and macho uber-violence, sound-tracked by catchy jangle rockabilly. Shuddering with yearning and sexual abiguity I Want The One I Can't Have is quite possibly one of the best songs ever written. It's a stand-out track - a catchy, quick paced indie pop tale of frustration and a doomed one sided infatuation....It veers from the impressionable criminal tirade 'he killed a policeman when he was thirteen/and somehow that really impressed me/its written all over my face' to the pleading, clutching at straws outburst 'if you ever need some self elevation/ just meet me in the alley by the railway station'... and it's all forlorn and musically infectious, tramping it's way to a sudden end.
The disruptive What She Said is frenzied 3 minute rock and roll that ditches the standard opening in favour of gradually fading itself in until you're hit with the full power of Johnny Marr and his guitar cranked up to punk rock levels alongside a pounding Mike Joyce drumbeat. It's the emphatic account of a downhearted female whose misfortunes are chronicled in Morrissey's finely tuned satirical narratives and biting jabs of cruelty 'what she said was sad/but then all the rejection she's had/to pretend to be happy could only be idiocy' ending with a terribly spiteful 'la la la la la la' He saves his most dramatic, over the top line for last...with the casually uttered testimony 'i smoke because i'm hoping for an early death/ and i need to cling to something' before it all storms off into raging guitar/drums crescendo. The only track from the album to be released as a single That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, the unrelentingly dark lament with lush arrangement and haunting lead guitar is emotionally unsettling as it soars and sinks in its almost muted respect for Morrissey's melancholic vocal delivery of some brilliantly written, concise lines...'when you laugh about people who feel so very lonely/ their only desire is to die' .... awash with tender realism, a cynical awareness and striking curiosity - all brought together as he croons the line 'i've seen this happen/ in other people's lives/and now it's happening in mine' with a brooding solemnity as if each lyrical recollection is the re-living of an agony. As natural as rain it shifts from melancholic despair to jaunty tomfoolery with the tempo shifting Nowhere Fast, a quick paced, guitar driven fun song featuring Morrissey's articulations of schoolboy wit...'i'd like to drop my trousers to the queen' he gleefully sings, before shifting down the political gears to proclaim 'the poor and the needy/ are selfish and greedy/on her terms' but in the very same mischevious tones and tongue-in-cheek bluster.
The gentle delicate simplicity of Well I Wonder is what makes it such a brilliant song. Everything jigsaws into perfect position from the temperate guitar strands, the plunging honesty of the lyrics and the atmospheric rainfall captured so alluringly on the last 63 seconds of the song. The lyrics spin a cluster of contradicting emotional innervation....from the desperately hopeful ' please keep me in mind' to harrowing sorrow 'gasping/dying/but somehow still alive/ this is the final stand of all I am' the sinewy despair of a shattered heart. Essentially a simple song about parent/child discipline Barbarism Begins At Home has just one repeated verse and chorus where every line is the voice of the no-nonsense parental disciplinarian....'unruly boys who will not grow up must be taken in hand/ unruly girls who will not settle down must be taken in hand and the menacing chorus 'a crack on the head is what you get for asking/and a crack on the head is what you get for not asking. But what gives the song something slightly magical is Andy Rourke's funky four-bar disco bassline, Johnny Marr's catchy guitar work...and Morrissey's vocal yelping. At nearly 7 minutes this has the potential to die somewhere long before it's scheduled end.....but the sheer delivery creates an emotional impact that grips you long after.
Bringing the album to a close is the mesmerising title track itself Meat Is Murder, the opening slaughterhouse noise samples and intricate piano, when combined in such a way, is an apocalyptic howl of angst ridden sorrow that shuffles on the jittery atmosphere of anticipation. This harmony-led adventure into darkness is undoubtedly Morrissey's moment to speechify - never has the subject matter been as reflective of an artist than here. Though he preaches rather than opening it for debate (this beautiful creature must die/ a death for no reason/ and death for no reason is MURDER!) it still manages to punctuate the gaps between singer and listener, regardless of opinion (No! No! No! it is murder/ do you know how animals die?) Damaged enough to break your heart it may not be, but it's potent enough to give cautious impartiality something to ponder upon.
As an album it never quite earned the accolades it surely deserves. Dismissed by many as The Smiths self-absorbed worst album and accepted by some as a half decent effort that got lost in its own translation. Personally I think it is a record of uncontested masterpieces - an array of brilliant moments that, when considered in their individual segments, are possibly some of the best things The Smiths ever achieved. Let's be honest, if this is the efforts of a band falling short of what they'd already shown they could do courtesy of the previous years debut album release then would they really have managed to follow this up with what is considered their greatest ever album The Queen Is Dead just over a year later?
Play entire album at SPOTIFY HERE
Monday, February 09, 2015
Album Review: Muzikal Yooth
The Green Door Kids
Muzikal Yooth
Sunday, February 08, 2015
From The Archives: Glen Campbell Album Review
Glen Campbell
Greatest Hits
Capitol Records
He may have his critics but you can’t argue with a career that spans almost 50 years straight. And every music lover on the planet is guaranteed to know at least one of his songs. He crossed country music with a pop vibe and established a whole new sound. C&W can thank him for saving its jaded little ass, big time! Even Q magazine doffed their caps to his contribution handing him their Legend Award in 2008. True, his best material is behind him, and today’s musical climate would only embrace ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ if covered by Glasvegas - but his legacy can’t be denied.
This latest Greatest Hits package contains all the usual suspects - ‘Wichita Lineman’, Gentle On My Mind’, ‘Galveston’ etc etc. We’ve heard them all before - except maybe his rendition of Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’, which is also his new single. It’s impossible to have a Glen Campbell compilation without the songs he’s known for. Therefore it will always seem a bit repetitive and cynical. This batch has gone through the cosmetics of ‘remastering’ just to sound that wee bit prettier for you fickle folk. But regardless of modern manipulation his existence remains an important part of a musical heritage. Of course, as you know, he was more interpreter than author, and has much to thank others for. But he brought his own style to it - and that’s pretty special!
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