These New Puritans, Beat Pyramid

These New Puritans, Beat Pyramid
Domino

Like an agitated teenager adrift from the early 80s, Jack Barnett, the spindly frontman of These New Puritans, has one foot in our digitised urban jungle of tarmac and grime (in the physical and musical senses) and the other in parallel realms of occultist mantras, astrology and mythology. Beat Pyramid, the debut from the malnourished Southend four-piece, is a scatterbrain collection of urgent guitars, drone-fuzz bass, looping textures and wild tangents, veering from danceable post-punk to whirring soundscape interludes, all peppered with an ironic deadpan that makes no bones about its debt to Mark E Smith. The lyrics are both intensely cryptic and laughably banal; a bizarre reference to Michael Barrymore on ‘MKK3’ and the profound emptiness of the repeated “0800, 0800” on ‘Elvis’ place the record in a fantasy galaxy, floating alongside the magickal space-age of Myths Of The Near Future but with its roots in a very British melancholia.

For a debut record it’s an astonishing achievement. An ode to pre-Socratic philosophers on the sparse and fantastically grimy ‘Infinity Ytinifni’ rubs up against the playground punk of ‘Numerology AKA Numbers’ - but it’s obvious that this is a juvenile effort, in the best possible sense. The sheer volume of ideas and influences here could contribute to a truly classic album a few years down the line when they’ve grown out of their ADD mindsets and started drinking grown-up beer. Like when a four year old stops drawing stick-men and progresses to wobbly arms and googly eyes: TNP are way ahead of their peers, but Beat Pyramid ain’t their Mona Lisa. This really is a band that needs to be nurtured properly and not just shoved off the roundabout of indie fame when ‘the new New Puritans’ pop up in about, ooh, three weeks?

26/01/2008

The Horrors NME Awards Show @ Astoria, 16/02/2008

The Horrors + Crystal Castles + These New Puritans + Ulterior
NME Awards Show @ Astoria, 16^th February

Welcome to one of the few genuinely decent line-ups on the never-ending Wagnerian nightmare that is the NME Awards Shows, the most ridiculous, turgid, self-serving piece of marketing guff since, well, the NME Awards. Sadly, Ulterior’s performance will be omitted from this review because nobody will ever convince me that the phrase ‘doors open at 5.30pm’ displays any grasp of logical reasoning. This is a real shame, because Ulterior’s Suicide-shagging-William-Reid industrial noise-drone is far too exciting to miss. Four hours of adverts for Shockwaves, Skins and Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong (a pox on that band for eating into my word count) is more than any creature equipped with opposable thumbs can bear.

These New Puritans capitalise on what must be their biggest show to date, their sound becoming truly enormous propelled by those hip hop drums and nauseating low-frequency basslines. Jack Barnett has apparently come dressed as a Norman swan in chainmail tunic of plastic feathers, his bowl cut balanced precariously on a bird-like neck. A genuinely beguiling frontman, he at least seems to be having fun – Sophie sullenly pokes around on synths, scratching her neck and fighting to stay awake through their grimy, angular onslaught. It’s genius.

The Astoria ain’t quite right for Crystal Castles dirrrty club aesthetic, but that doesn’t stop the half-term rave kids’ sugar rush as they go batshit crazy for Alice’s winged-insect-trapped-in-a-bottle stage moves. Still, the deliciously warped malignancy of ‘Alice Practice’ and fizzing sodapop electro of ‘Air War’ stand out a mile above the samey bleeps of the non-singles, which doesn’t bode well for their upcoming album.

The Horrors return to headline the Astoria barely a year after their opening slot on the Rock’n’Roll Riot Tour, another steaming delight from the NME featuring The Dykeenies, The Maccabees and The Fratellis. Christ. Tighter and louder than ever before (both sartorially and musically), they’ve come a long way since then - this set almost makes the 45 minute mark, and Faris’ inter-song banter is becoming increasingly absurd: “sing for your supper,” he snarls into the mic, cracking himself up in the process. A handful of new songs are previewed, more experimental and less obviously derived from their garage rock bread and butter, and they certainly take themselves a lot less seriously than precocious fellow Southenders TNP or the notoriously snarky Crystal Castles.

At 9.30pm the whole shebang is brought to an untimely close. The crowd scratch their heads. It’s unsettling, but at least there’s time for a pint before the tube closes.

20/02/2008

Les Savy Fav, Let's Stay Friends

Les Savy Fav, Let’s Stay Friends
Wichita Records

It’s been six years since the last release from Les Savy Fav, a dumb move considering that their brand of noisy art-punk seriously came back in vogue in that time. No matter, with Let’s Stay Friends the Rhode Islanders are back to capitalise on their matchless live reputation with an album that’s without doubt the sharpest they’ve ever sounded. Opener ‘Pots & Pans’ is a pounding titan of a track, hinting at classic Flaming Lips; after seizing you by the earlobes it then collapses into the clattering Hives-a-like punk of ‘The Equestrian’, super-tight but with buckets of genuine DIY enthusiasm. Next, you’re plunged into the menacing cold water of ‘The Year Before The Year 2000’, a chic slice of post-punk with Gang Of Four guitars and a breakneck ending chanting the pseudo-mantra “1999! 1999’s alright!”

The real standout here though is ‘Patty Lee’, a veritable odyssey of miscellaneous brilliance taking in their trademark minimal guitars and pounding drums, funky falsetto vocals, a screeching solo and a bizarre Cure impression of hollow, reverb-soaked guitars, topped off with the dancefloor-ready shout-along, “Patty Lee turn your lights on please/ this party’s gettin’ outta hand!” Download this if nothing else.

Along with other standouts like ‘Raging In The Plague Age’ (featuring Tim Harrington’s musings on medieval sovereignty: “Being the king was pretty cool/ I'd have to say that ruling ruled”), Let’s Stay Friends may be the record that can finally equal Les Savy Fav’s thrilling live show.

12/09/2007

Adam Green @ Koko, 08/04/2008

Adam Green + Noah And The Whale @ Koko
8^th April 2008

Call me crazy, but I’ve never had Adam Green down as ‘twee’. Sure, The Moldy Peaches were cutesy teens in animal costumes with lyrics by turn sickly sweet and childishly vulgar. But his solo career has seen him explore far beyond the DIY sounds and in-jokeyness of his former band, bringing in strings and organs and now, on fifth solo record Sixes And Sevens, panpipes and gospel singers. In the meantime his voice has matured into a rich and mellow baritone (which may not be to everyone’s taste, especially those Juno-come-lately fans who’ve discovered his work via the soundtrack to the recent flick).

Still, someone decided that Noah And The Whale would be the perfect anti-folk style support slot for this UK tour. And to some extent they are – kitted out in blue and yellow like earnest little Ikea workers, they have a fantastic violin player who actually gets melody parts rather than the usual mournful backing bits they’re allocated. There’s a song that’s suspiciously like ‘Brimful Of Asha’, but the rest are excellent despite the odd banal lyrical tweeism. This undeniably British folk bears little resemblance to Adam Green though – the US anti-folk scene has its roots in entirely different soil. Still, they go down well with the crowd of bespectacled kids who already know all the words.

Wearing a t-shirt adorned with the letter A and white fringing flowing from his sleeves, Adam Green is nothing less than charming throughout, even while singing about herpes, crack and ‘genital outlaws’. A ramshackle but effortless performance, he’s truly the bizarre gem in the NY folk scene’s crown. Moldy who?

Miracle Fortress @ The Luminaire, 04/04/2008

Miracle Fortress + The Joy Formidable
The Luminaire, 4^th April 2008

Remember when indie girls cut their hair into shiny faux-punk bobs and wore chokers and tank tops and diluted all the venom and feminism and balls out of riot grrrl, leaving you with three minutes of peppy but vacant drivel for drive time local radio? You remember Republica? Yeah, well, there’s this band called The Joy Formidable, and for them it’s still 1998. Making no attempt to disguise a greedy suckling from the teat of their fellow Welshmen’s milky powerpop (think Feeder and Catatonia), their frontwoman has aforementioned faux-punk bob and is allegedly called Ritzy. Next!

Miracle Fortress have been creating, if not an overwhelming fizz of hype, then certainly a gentle bubble of interest among discerning music fans fond of ‘that Montreal sound.’ North America is producing such bloody weird indie right now – like Desert Island Discs, they’re at once tropical and otherworldly, and so very, very necessary. MF do that expansive, fusion sound brilliantly, but without the smug sheen of manipulative chord modulations that the Arcade Fire did so crassly on Neon Bible. With a certain DIY shabbiness (or maybe they just haven’t played much yet), every song is a melting pot of dark 80s indie pop, mucky shoegaze and chirpy battling guitars. It’s all super-fresh and nearly cute (but not quite, don’t worry), and their guitarist looks like either a) a mermaid, with saltwater perm and seashell earrings, or b) Becky, the babysitter you had in 1994 who let you stay up late and used your home phone to call her boyfriend. And there was a John Cale cover at the end. John Cale! Unlucky for you they won’t be back in the UK for a while, but definitely worth a download in the meantime.

Meeting Anton Newcombe: "I might be the tactile expression of the hand that holds the sword"

An interview with Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre
26th February 2008

“I don’t feel the need to take out my personal aggressions on other people. I’m not persnickety, I’m not prone to hyperbole. I can do whatever the fuck I want, within reason, but I have to pay for my indiscretions, just like Prince Charles.” A grizzled but handsome man with striking greyish blue eyes holds his glass like a gauntlet, ice rattling violently side to side in his lunchtime vodka tonic.

Anton Newcombe is wearing a grey woollen jumper, the kind favoured by trawler fishermen, and on his sleeve is a patch of the Icelandic flag. His lank hair pokes out under two hats – a cable knit number more suitable for the North Sea, and under it a baseball cap. It’s a fiercely bright spring day outside the Columbia Hotel in West London, and the forty year old man behind cult psychedelic rock band The Brian Jonestown Massacre is being, well, pretty damn amiable. Contrary to what his hyperbole would suggest (yes, he is in fact rather prone to it), Newcombe is rather well known for taking out personal aggressions on other people, and I have to admit to a being a little nervous about this interview.

Newcombe has forged a lonely path on the outer fringes of rock music since 1990 with The Brian Jonestown Massacre, his own strung out creation, a freewheeling voyage to trip-out city that has seen over forty members pass through its ranks, including Peter Hayes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Bobby Hecksher of The Warlocks. The band remained relatively underground until Newcombe found infamy through the 2004 rockumentary DiG!, which chronicled BJM’s volatile relationship with fellow West Coast sixties revivalists and pals/arch-enemies The Dandy Warhols. While that band ultimately sold out and gained commercial success, BJM was thwarted by Newcombe’s inability to play by the rules, sabotaging opportunities through drink and drugs – the film portrays him as an unhinged nutcase with a chronic superiority complex and anger management issues (at one point he kicks an audience member in the head, leading to his arrest for assault).

Still, a movie is just that – a movie – and I wasn’t especially surprised to meet a man who, while being possessed of a conversational style not unlike a never-ending one-man word association game, is genuinely interested in and engaged with the world and the people in it. “Politics is applied policy, and my policy is to be civic minded,” he states, slurring his words only slightly. “My policy is to call it as I see it.” BJM’s new album, My Bloody Underground (songs include ‘Dropping Bombs On The White House’ and ‘Kicking Jesus’) seems to pretty political though? “Being able to read in this day and age, or not being brainwashed by fluoride and prozac, or being high on drugs and having a very high IQ is not political.”

Perhaps not, but Newcombe is certainly preoccupied with the state of the world as he sees it, deluging his Myspace friends with bulletins of cut’n’pasted news items, Youtube videos and conspiracy theories. “I can speak in a sentence with perfect syntax that actually makes sense and contains 23 words, and the President of the United States of America can’t. And my son can do 13 or 14 words in a row, so if that doesn’t disturb you you’ve been jacking off to, like, whatever you’re watching…Cash In The Attic or Jeremy Kyle or whatever.” This kind of polemical pronouncement juxtaposed with the absurdity of British daytime television is the hallmark of Newcombe’s inebriated rhetoric.

His politics certainly aren’t of the Chris Martin School of scribbling peace memos on the back of your hand or visiting farm co-operatives in Venezuela, though. Newcombe lives in a part-fantasy land where the trivial rubs up against the profound and he is the oracle of truth among us sheep-like non-believers. More than once during the interview he implies my stupidity when I raise an eyebrow at some of his more outlandish political views: “Hillary Clinton has been a CIA agent since 1968, and Obama is personally involved in this Kenyan thing that’s going on. And they’re rigging the caucuses.”

Well, that last one might have something to it. The most important thing for Newcombe, though, is to have the courage of your convictions. His existence is the true embodiment of ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’, and he sees life through the lens of a true outsider. He shows an almost Daily Mail-like disdain for the superficiality and impotence of modern life: “The problem with these kids is everybody’s just got their head up their ass, and they’re running around chasing their mortgage payment, mutual fund portfolio, whatever, and then they get beat up by a thirteen year old. Everybody needs to get the fuck off their cell phone for a minute and pay attention, and if you see that thing happening, fucking knock ‘em down and break their back, I mean, it just saves the police time and…”

So if we’re going to hell in a handcart then we can take the law into our own hands? That doesn’t seem very ‘civic minded’. “No, but I mean, I don’t know what the appropriate reaction is to watching two teenagers stab each to death on the streets of London…I’m willing to do whatever I have to do. I’m a centurion, not a Caesar. How’s that?,” he challenges. You’re part of the body politic? “Completely. I might be the trunk. I might be the tactile expression of the hand that holds the sword.” It’s a glimmer of his unique genius, a hilarious yet learned soundbite, one of a bunch of Newcombe’s contradictory, polemical nuggets. Just when you think he’s making sense the vodka kicks in and words pour out in a loose jumble. “The industrial revolution has become a hopeless burden,” he rants, “and as the economy has diversified its just like, beans on toast, 99p, what are we gonna do with you? That’s true right?” Um, right.

Discussing the new album, Newcombe is proud to continue his long-standing advocacy of free music. “My expression of my humanity is a full spectrum of ideas, concepts, impulses and repulsions, and the balance, the equilibrium, of all those things. I cook, I create art in different forms, and I really want other people to try and take a sniff of that. Whether it’s on just a primal level, just jamming along, it’s just noisy - or whatever you wanna make of it as an abstract art piece. And it has nothing to do with Amy Winehouse or selling donuts or bars of soap.” Adding that he’d be ‘pleased as punch’ if everyone downloaded it for free (it’s available on the band’s website), he expresses his concern over the increased policing of the internet. Once again, we enter the paranoid corners of his mind – ‘they’ are going to shut down the internet, “they’re gonna make it secular and specific within your own borders, a digital class-based system.”

By the end of the interview I start to doubt that I’ve gleaned have any idea of who Anton Newcombe really is. His wife, not much older than me, sits silently on the armchair next to him. I wonder what their conversations are like. There’s no doubt that he’s completely for real, that he believes every word that comes out of his mouth even when he contradicts himself within the same sentence. Facts, trivia and conspiracy race around under his two hats looking for an outlet. It seems odd that they find their release The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s essentially derivative (although undoubtedly ace) shoegazey psych-rock. Then again, as he’s so keen to emphasise, Newcombe is “not really interested in people’s stupid impressions of my expressions of what I think.”

One More Grain @ White Heat, 08/01/2008

One More Grain + My Sad Captains + Mixedcases
White Heat, Madame Jojo’s
8^th January 2008

Tonight sees a White Heat Records special down in the freshened-up, post-smoking ban Madame Jojo’s, something that usually marks a night of disjointed weirdness by a bunch of utterly dissimilar bands. This Tuesday continues the trend, opening with solo multi-instrumentalist, beat-maker and typically awkward wiry indie boy Mixedcases. His cerebral lo-fi blends live xylophones and guitars with sampled chatter and synths to make soundscapes for the 4am post-club ‘chillout’, as they say in ‘Beefa, though it all falls a bit flat in this early slot.

My Sad Captains are one of the most promising bands on the White Heat roster currently, and the sizeable turnout shows their potential for actually selling some records too. Sharing a member with Fanfarlo (another of those inexplicably cheerful bands that have appeared recently), their stompy choruses and pleasant country-pop indicates that a ‘proper indie’ (in an early 90s, Pavement-y sorta way) revival is upon us. We even get two check shirts for the price of one.

Despite the sparser crowd, the meandering art-rock creepiness of One More Grain is without doubt the most exciting thing on this bill. An apparently normal bunch of grumpy - possibly even rather old – men, OMG seem to be staging their own revivalist movement, this time of legendary punk poet John Cooper Clarke, with a nod to the Velvets’ spoken word tale of horror ‘The Gift’ plus added atonal guitar work for good measure. Taking his literary cue from the sorry towns and endless motorways of England’s grey and unpleasant land, frontman Daniel Patrick Quinn is less poet than Northern grumbler, and thus couldn’t be further away in disposition or geography to My Sad Captains. A bizarre gem; it warms your heart to know there’s a record label putting out stuff like this.

The Death Of Indie, with Anne Hollowday, 27/10/2007

The Death Of Indie
co-written with Anne Hollowday for London Student

Over the past few years, the dominance of dance and RnB in the charts has waned and in its place has appeared a glut of guitar bands and quirky indie popstars. As each X Factor ‘winner’ faces a shorter shelf-life than their predecessor, the public have shifted their affections towards a cast of trilby wearing boys and foul-mouthed girls. At first this was an obvious change for the better – no more boybands on stools or vacuous gyrating ‘divas’ – but like all trends, this one has reached its tipping point. Indie music is now the most mainstream and popular genre in the UK, and anyone old enough to remember the dying days of Britpop will feel a similar dark cloud approaching over this particular fad. How did indie get so – well, un-indie? And what does that mean for the few artists who are still flying the flag for independent music?

The fashion industry has spent the past few years copying the styles of two people in particular, and you only have to look around at your fellow students to take a guess at who the culprits might be. Correct: the ubiquitous Kate Moss and Pete Doherty. Kate, after a fifteen year career and barely a word from her lips, is considered the ultimate fashion icon and arbiter of cool. Despite the fact that Pete’s music has a cult following and doesn’t sell particularly well, his career has spawned countless more mainstream and radio-friendly copycat bands that also happen to dress like him. Kate’n’Pete tread a fine line between being both bohemian, rock’n’roll icons and tabloid regulars, household names that are a byword for cool.

By coincidence – or inevitably, depending on how you look at it – these two pillars of chic came together in 2005 to become an all-powerful super-couple, elevating themselves to daily tabloid fodder. Over recent years Britain has also seen an explosion in gossip magazine culture and reality television. Celebrity Big Brother has made household names of various indie characters like Maggot from Goldie Lookin’ Chain, Preston from The Ordinary Boys and Donny Tourette from Towers of London. Preston’s love life and Donny’s rockstar pretensions have earned them countless column inches in the company of other ‘troubled stars’ of the more rock’n’roll variety such as Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. Even relatively obscure artists like Beth Ditto of the Gossip have made an appearance in rags like London Lite. Britain’s daily gossip fix has elevated the fame of these cartoonish indie celebrities – no wonder, seeing as they’re all far more interesting and unpredictable than their US counterparts Jessica Simpson, Nicole Richie et al.

These rock’n’roll clichés have become the zeitgeist whose influence is felt in the press and in fashion, in what we read, what we talk about, what we wear – not to mention what we listen to. Most importantly, Kate’n’Pete hold uncontested power over most of that holy grail of demographics: the youth. The 18-24 market is considered to be the most difficult to crack as well as the most coveted (being a generation with plenty of disposable income and no clue about saving money). This is where ad-land hijacks indie, taking its remaining credibility and style and selling it back to us on their terms. The companies that want our money develop their brands in line with whatever they think we’ll buy. Every mobile phone company seems to have sponsored a handful of music festivals and a series of ‘guerrilla gigs’ (remember them?). Drinks manufacturers Carling and Jim Beam have put their name to tours and festivals, hoping to raise their profile among the alcohol-loving youth. Step into Topshop or Topman and you can see this trend come full-circle – Kate Moss has her very own line and the Pete-inspired Dior Homme range has made a smooth transfer to the high street. The current incarnation of indie stands for taste and style but is also immediately accessible and commercial. In effect, ‘indie’ has become its own brand, completely detached from the independent music it used to signify.

The impact on the actual music has been less than positive too. A lot of truly awful bands have been unduly promoted in the race to sign up and spit out Babyshambles clones. New bands that don’t conform to the rock’n’roll cartoon have been sadly overlooked while countless scruffy teenagers in straw hats have signed on the dotted line for record deals that will no doubt leave them penniless and confused after their debut albums achieve mediocre sales.

The press and marketing companies have also become fixated with Myspace in recent years, as it’s a relatively easy way to discover the Next Big Thing. Even though a few artists have done very well from humble internet beginnings (Arctic Monkeys and Kate Nash being notable examples), there’s no reason why the Myspace fame trajectory is any better than the old method of gigging round the toilet circuit until you get signed – internet hype is notoriously fickle and many of these bands will be offered single album deals and no real support to develop their music. What seems like an explosion of ‘indie’ is actually the powerful record companies cashing in on a trend that they know will sell, just as they did with talentless teenypop in the 90s personified by fluorescent suit-wearers Upside Down and, bless them, 911.

Meanwhile, the UK hip hop scene has been mutating and evolving into something original, complex and significantly different to anything happening in the US. Under the radar, grime has become the antidote to the identikit mainstream indie bands. NME editor Conor McNicholas has been quoted as saying, “the grime scene is perceived as a lot cooler and lot more real than the indie scene,” yet the music press gives barely any space to up and coming grime acts. Whether in response to this stubborn lack of coverage or just as an anarchic joke, a number of urban artists have been collaborating with indie bands in recent years.

Lethal Bizzle is one grime act who has become a crossover star. Starting out as part of the More Fire Crew, Bizzle has since collaborated with yourcodenameis:milo and Pete Doherty, and he’s on the bill of the current NME Rock’n’Roll Riot tour. Lethal Bizzle was in the audience for hardcore punk band Gallows’ arresting performance at the SXSW festival in Texas earlier this year, and became a fully fledged fan. They’re now collaborating on a reworking of ‘Staring At The Rude Bois’, originally released by reggae punk band The Ruts in 1980. Bizzle’s latest album also features an appearance from indie’s current golden girl Kate Nash. These fusions of grime and guitars, dubbed ‘grindie’, are totally fresh and contemporary, offering the opposite of anodyne radio rock. Whether or not it’s perceived as a gimmick, it’s an indication of the two-way relationship between these two seemingly disparate genres. The term was originally coined as a joke by grime producer Statik, but it became the catalyst for a physical manifestation of the genre as Statik’s Grindie Volume 1 compilation was released last year to critical acclaim. “I think people tend to over think it,” he told the Style Slut blog last year, “all musical genres have similarities. I didn’t think about it being a good or bad idea, I just did it.”

Jamie Collinson, manager of independent hip hop label Big Dada recordings, remains largely indifferent to the ‘grindie’ effect. He says of the phenomenon: “it was just a hype-building exercise that snagged press attention for a short while. I think it was largely scorned and ignored by the grime community in general.” He concedes that hip-hop has been a point of reference for some bands though, particularly Arctic Monkeys. “Alex Turner has certainly namechecked Roots Manuva a lot, and you can see a kinship in their incisive, British lyrics, but that’s rare and these days indie kids are probably mostly influenced by The Libertines.”

Regardless of the little ripples urban music is making on the stagnant indie pond, record labels remain reluctant to promote talented acts that don’t conform to the coveted ideal of indie – skinny jeans and sharp cheekbones command more attention than an original, unique talent. When Franz Ferdinand first hit the spotlight they said their intention was “to make music for girls to dance to” – a mission statement that seemed genuinely unusual at the time. Now of course, indie is dominated by radio-friendly riffs, sugary pop harmonies and lightweight lyrical content. Recent knock-offs of this formula include Scouting For Girls’s ‘She’s So Lovely’ and The Wombats’ unintentionally ironic ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’, as well as most of the daytime playlist at Xfm and Radio 1. These are songs which have made the leap from MTV2 to background music on property programmes and in high street shops. It’s a testimony to their blandness that they’ve been absorbed into the mainstream so easily. Contemporary indie isn’t always boring, and mainstream music isn’t necessarily bad (there are plenty of quality pop songs around, after all), but none of it could be honestly described as ‘indie’ in the true sense of the word. Tony Wilson was a legend in the independent sector, single-handedly building Factory Records with a disregard for everything except the quality of the music, signing bands like Joy Division and A Certain Ratio to his label and even allowing bands to keep the rights to their music. These days, bands consider themselves indie if they are signed to a smaller subsidiary under the umbrella of a large company, when in fact they are still owned by a big corporation. This pattern of small independents being bought up by the big fish has done the independent sector few favours, and in turn affected the chances of success for more obscure, niche audience artists.

At this time of mainstream indie dominance the artists that don’t fit the template are often overlooked, but ironically it will be those who are signed in the latter days of this fad, like the aforementioned Wombats, who are most likely to fade into obscurity. As Collison notes, “it’s a generational thing, there’s always a swing between the popularity of urban and indie. When urban is on top you get kids rebelling against that - a build up of energy and talent suddenly explodes, as it did around 2003 with a huge crop of new guitar bands.” As indie and its rock’n’roll cartoon characters continue to be seen, heard and consumed everywhere, urban music is bubbling away beneath the surface, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Is that time nearly upon us?

Black Lips, Good Bad Not Evil

Black Lips, Good Bad Not Evil
Vice Records

1968 was a pretty cool year. It gave us ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’ by Tom Wolfe, the film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and The Velvets’ seminal album White Light/White Heat. There were drugs. There was rock’n’roll. And there were the Black Lips.

Well, almost. The Black Lips are a four-piece from Atlanta, Georgia whose fifth release, Good Bad Not Evil, is (much like the previous four) a work that obstinately ignores the past forty years of popular music, instead wallowing in fuzzy garage rock guitars, primal drumming, country twists and psychedelic flower-punk, all coming in under the three minute mark. This record sees the Lips make a leap from the crazed noisiness of earlier releases and explore new and even more bizarre territory. Southern slide guitars flavour the tasteless hilarity of ‘How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died?’, while ‘Navajo’ is the soundtrack to a long-forgotten cowboys and Indians TV show. Single ‘Cold Hands’ is more typically Black Lips, but tidied up and straightened out so that if Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett ran a radio station that broadcast in the Mojave desert it could almost be deemed ‘radio-friendly’.

Their live reputation is pretty terrifying, so if you’d rather stay dry while soaking up your Sixties rock then Good Bad Not Evil should appeal. Obviously the Lips have their detractors, as anyone labelled ‘revivalist’ inevitably does, but if you’re a fan of Lenny Kaye’s genius Nuggets compilation or, heck, even The Horrors’ take on deranged psych-rock, then you’ll have no complaints. Long live flower-punk.

22/10/2007

The Cribs live at the Forum, 17th October 2007

The Cribs + Bobby Conn + Jakobinarina @ The Forum
17^th October 2007

Entering to the glorious lycra-pop of Whitney’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, the Jarmans run off their usual spiel about being “The Cribs frum Wehkfield” and launch into eighty minutes of blistering punk ditties for a crowd who look like they’ve never heard music before, let alone music this good. Though there really are a lot of songs that have that trademark “oh oh oh-oh” bit in it, and though their shows do always culminate in nakedness, stage-diving and human blood, they’re still more rock’n’roll than your band, so shove it. Ryan’s rant at Glastonbury about the “mainstream attitude of most indie bands” would indicate that they’re happy to have a loyal fanbase of mentalists while remaining unknown to the world of London Lite readers. That is, until he wooed Kate Nash. Is the mainstream ready for Wakefield?