January 26th... Newcastle Cluny
Here are some of our highlights from Jazzy Lemon’s flickr set of us playing at the Cluny in Newcastle on January 11th. These are too good not to post and share. There’s loads more pictures on the flickr stream, which we think is great.
January 15th... Reviewing some favourite tracks from 2010
Land Of Talk - ‘Quarry Hymns’
A long-time favourite hereabouts; Liz and friends created a full-length in the shape of ‘Cloak And Cipher’ that delivers on the rawness of their earlier records with added power, melody and subtlety. Best of all is ‘Quarry Hymns’, an insistent ache of a song revolving around a pretty sigh of, “how deep is this hole I feel I’m in?”. It soars without fully letting go, oozing wistful loveliness.
Envy - ‘Set Yourself On Fire’
‘Set Yourself On Fire’ pits Envy’s tongue-twisting delivery against the clatter of Medasyn’s beats and the result is like a futuristic space-war of sound against sound. It’s awesome, and makes a lot of guitar music look like the frail scratchings of a music trying to bury itself.
Foals - ‘2 Trees’
What impresses about Foals’ second record is that it’s not afraid to let its songs unwind gently and slowly: they settle around you and seep in rather than trying to appease the short attention span. ‘2 Trees’ sets out with characteristic high-fret guitars, all chattery and skipping, but around the three-minute mark the song drifts into a digital glow that’s like falling asleep in the bath. For the heart, not just the hips.
The Chariot - ‘David De La Hoz’
See our journal post from last December...
Arcade Fire -’ Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’
The high-point on ‘The Suburbs’, an album that without being particularly ground-breaking musically, manages to read like a lexicon of what life is like NOW, summing up the human experience better than any band seem to be able to do. It’s a record that evokes the present, the past, that’s about growing up, about how the things that define you can slip by you. It’s so emotionally entangled in what enthrals pop music through its past that it’s actually ahead of its info-drenched, speeded-up time.
MIA - ‘Born Free’
Fearsome. Fearless. Fierce.
Deftones - ‘Sextape’
Deftones have finally honed the lush, fragile end of their song-writing. Yes, they can do big riff drops and crunching FM-friendly rock vibes, but here they seem to be just as in love with warmth, danger and sparkle. They do it on ‘976-EVIL’, on ‘This Place Is Death’, but they do it best on ‘Sextape’, and its video is just as, if not more, lush and sexy. Slip on in.
Everything Everything - ‘Qwerty Finger’
In music so full of ideas it’s hard to keep up, what you need are moments you can hold on to, grasp with your hands and pull close to you. Probably the most tangible moment on ‘Man Alive’ is the corner they turn two and a half minutes into this song with a yelped hook of ‘I AM..!’. Leave alone the sinews of dextrous bass-playing that put us all to shame and the rush of hand-claps, 2010 was as much about that moment as anything else.
Les Savy Fav - ‘Let's Get Out Of Here’
‘Older statesmen’... ‘godfathers of post-punk’... blah blah. It’s mindless to reach so quickly for the clichés when talking about a band this far into its career. Luckily there’s a simplicity of purpose and execution to this record that trumps any need to go down that route. ‘Let’s Get Out Of Here’ is their best song since ‘Hold On To Your Genre’. They write the rulebook, we just read it.
Oceansize - ‘Oscar Acceptance Speech’
Brutal. Delicate. Widescreen. Immediate. Oceansize have a great reach of ideas, and the courage to follow each one through, lacing them into nine-minute songs like this. Plus, when they’ve weaved these impressive monuments to the all-is-possible, and offset them with pianos and string parts, they give them fantastic titles like ‘9/11 Commemorative T-Shirt‘ and ‘Oscar Acceptance Speech’. Respect.
Listen to these songs (bar one) as a Spotify playlist
