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2016: The gift that keeps on giving

Not since the golden era of 2009-2011 have so many magnificent shoegaze albums been released in such rapid succession.

2016, I can’t keep up.

So far this year, we’ve been blessed with new releases by the following bands:

  • LSD and the Search for God
  • Nothing
  • bloody knives
  • Yuck
  • Pinkshinyultrablast
  • Hammock
  • Autolux
  • Mogwai
  • Deftones
  • Explosions in the Sky
  • M83
  • Ask For Joy
  • SULK
  • 65daysofstatic
  • The Verve (reissues)
  • Night School

Edited to add:

  • Pity Sex
  • DIIV
  • STFU

While releases by Autolux and M83 were unconventional enough to register no more than a blip on this radar, we’re still eagerly awaiting:

  • Airiel
  • Alcest
  • The Radio Department
  • A Shoreline Dream
  • Seasurfer (just announced).

Edited to add:

  • Tears Run Rings
  • Blueneck
  • The Emerald Down
  • The Stargazer Lilies

I can’t keep up.

Tell me what I’ve missed.

 

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Review Track

The Ride Today: The Last of the Microdance

It’s difficult to imagine that this might be the last article I write on The Microdance, contender for AE’s Most Written-About Group (and, with this post, the likely winner).

Not long ago, I woke up to the rude news that the Microdance was disbanding

capture-decran-2016-09-08-a-22-32-57

 

Surely not!

The Microdance were seemingly at their peak. They released their first full-length album last year, and it was only days before Alex’s status update that they’d celebrated the launch of their latest single – ‘The Ride Today’ – with a launch party in East London.

Goodbye adieu farewell

In the days that followed the cold, harsh truth of the breakup came to light. Nothing as glamorous as inter-bandmate animosity, or stories of uncontrollable drug abuse and sordid affairs. No, it’s just that being in a band in the 21st century is not very profitable for those involved. Having to pay for and lug your own equipment to studios and venues isn’t quite the rock and roll lifestyle we grew up dreaming of.

While ‘The Ride Today’ was never expressly composed to serve as a swan song for The Microdance, there could be no more fitting closure to a group that is part shoegaze, part metal, and part 80s power chords (check that guitar at the end). Then again, with an open admission that they create an average of one new song a day, it’s hard to imagine that Alex, Gavin and co. will go on for very long without a couple more releases – perhaps under a different moniker? Together with its A-Side ‘Come Back To Me My Lover In The Sky’ who we first met last year on New Waves of Hope, ‘The Ride Today’ is hopefully, probably, less of a goodbye and more of a BRB.

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Album Review

The Verve – A Storm in Heaven / A Northern Soul (2016 remastered/deluxe)

It’s been a while since I listened to The Verve.

There was a time I knew every song on every album by heart. I’d cycle between A Storm In Heaven, A Northern Soul and Urban Hymns for months on end, as a result of which I could tell which version of ‘Slide Away’ was from which live performance or which studio session within the first three seconds.

But that was ten years ago.

Since then I’ve gone from hormonal, hopeful adolescence to jaded, emotionless adulthood.

But today I play A Storm in Heaven and I feel the same heady anticipation before ‘Already There’ as I did when I was 19. The same teenage tears sting my eyeballs when ‘A Man Called Sun’ asks me ‘do you think he’ll mind?‘ And I can still see the percussion on ‘Butterfly’ throbbing perfectly from a thousand miles away.

It takes a great deal of emotional strength to sit through a single album by the Verve, mostly because of the sheer intensity of their songs’ subject matter.

The Verve don’t mope about the end of a relationship as much as they brood over the inevitability of its demise.

I’ve gotta tell you my tale
Of how I loved and how I failed
Maybe you know it’s true
Living with me’s like keeping a fool

They don’t show you the glamour of a drug-fuelled high, but the pathos of the comedown.

There you were on the floor
Cut up and all alone
I held you

They don’t talk to you about the tragedy of death but the acceptance of the interminable sorrow that follows

Could be a lifetime before I see you again, my love
See you in the next one have a good time.

And they’ll push your misanthropic self to embrace the splendour of isolation

Life seems so obscene
Until it’s over

You come in on your own
And you leave on your own
Forget the lovers you’ve know
And your friends on your own

Verve listeners seem to fall predominantly into either the A Storm In Heaven or the A Northern Soul camp. While some of us pick at cobwebs in our lesser-frequented Urban Hymns corner, we all unanimously gloss over the very existence of Forth. However, if there is one song on The Verve’s last album worth listening to, it is ‘Mover,’ probably because it was around before Forth was a twinkle in Richard Ashcroft’s eye. On the new reissue of A Northern Soul, you hear the BBC Studio version, and you can tell it carries the same polish as the rest of their second album.

Perhaps that why A Storm In Heaven always seemed to me to be the stronger of the two. While there was no denying A Northern Soul’s musical maturity and the far more elaborate spectrum of emotions it covered (daring to venture into themes of defiance and hope, even), the Verve never truly returned to the young, naïve emotional rawness that defined their debut. On A Storm in Heaven and the B-sides it spawned you hear someone struggling to stay nonchalantly afloat when in reality, they’re far out of their depth (standard youthful stupidity). Meanwhile, on A Northern Soul, you hear experience and control (which is what you can expect when you’re a grown-up for whom death and taxes are de rigeur). A Northern Soul is not as personal, and far more guarded and reflective than its predecessor which sits young, loud and reckless.

A Northern Soul and its B-sides carry a slight self-consciousness, to the point that they are almost too flawless, while A Storm in Heaven is beautiful because it is flawed.

Both albums are perfection of different kinds and in being reissued, they give us the chance to be taken in, transported and transformed all over again. You meet the ‘Mover’ you never did. You discover ‘This is Music’ was once ‘King Riff’, while ‘The Rolling People’ was, in its original avatar, called ‘Funky Jam'(!). These extensive deluxe reissues are a six hour vortex into the best the Verve have ever been and I’d gladly know nothing else in the world if I could know every note on every song on these disparate recordings.

There is one thing, though, that reminds you that they are albums by the same group. The shared conviction that there is only one thing really worth living for.

You better pray when the music stops
And you’re left alone in your mind
‘Cause I’ll be hearing music till the day I die

Jesus never saved me
He’ll never save you too, and you know…
I’ve got a little sticker on the back of my boot
This is music.

Originally published on Drowned in Sound

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Album Review

Night School – Blush

Turn on Night School‘s debut full-length, Blush, and you’ll immediately recognise Lexy Morte’s voice from her days with Whirr.

That’s not all that’s familiar. Brace yourself for wave after crashing wave of nostalgia: from the light charm of ’60s girl group harmonies, to the echoes of innocent adolescent romance, down to the scent of wholesome, sunlit, Americana.

Where, with Whirr, the melancholy of words and music served as the perfect foil to Morte’s angelic vocals, on Blush, the melange of happy notes and summer distortion only serve to amplify their sweetness. Added to this are lyrics that swirl around hopeful spring romance and teenage heartbreak – perhaps most profoundly evident on the aptly titled ‘Teen Feelings’ whose every verse, every chorus is blindingly dappled by the California sun. Summertime – school’s out forever […] Hope it’s just you and me forever.

Album opener, ‘These Times’ is a delightfully chipper track, swaying under the weight of its own optimism in the light of (possibly) devastating circumstances. The hopelessly dreamy words to ‘City Kiss’ (do you remember/the time we kissed at midnight/in the city lights/you are the one) are no different, but themes of youth helplessness are ubiquitous. Don’t be fooled by the exuberance radiating across this album. On ‘Casanova’, we mourn poor decisions (maybe I shouldn’t like you so much/you’re heavy and I’m a breaking crutch), while the cheery chords on ‘Lost’ are offset by lyrics as upbeat as lost my best friend/now I’m crying on my bed.

You’d be forgiven for believing, on your first listen, that Blush is the same track repeated ten times over. You’d be wrong. It’s only the first nine songs on the album that follow the happy harmonies template. The final track, ‘Pink,’ is a refreshingly mellow, reverb-free piano-led instrumental which, at just a minute and a half, is easily lost within the cheerful jangle that makes up the rest of the album. When you notice it – which you may not at first – you might find yourself wondering why it couldn’t have been just a little bit longer. Or perhaps why it couldn’t have had a friend nestled elsewhere on the record.

‘Pink’ aside, Blush is not a sad album. There’s no sign of cynicism, defeat or anger. Even at its lowest, the album remains eternally optimistic and, while the words may never articulate it, assures its listener that hope springs eternal.

Not recommended for realists.

Originally published on Drowned in Sound

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Album Review

Nothing – Tired of Tomorrow

There’s no romance in a Nothing track. There’s no glamour, triumph or tragedy, even though each of their albums is born out of the third. Nothing never bemoan their lot. Their days, like ours, are made of bad decisions and bad luck. Their lives, like ours, a series of unfortunate events. And while we can live in the hope that tomorrow may be a better day, it probably won’t be.

There’s no sadness in this revelation; just a quiet acceptance of an unchangeable reality. There’s no anger, except towards impossible optimism thrust our way. ‘Vertigo Flowers’, the first track we heard off Tired of Tomorrow back in early March, is possibly the most overtly hostile song on the album, opening with an unembellished: “I hate everything you’re saying”. It’s a sonic powerhouse that manages to legitimise rather than stigmatise feelings of anxiety and paranoia with a simple “watch out for those who dare to say/that everything will be okay”.

Album opener, ‘Fever Queen’, is an explicit admission of mistakes made and repeated. It launches the album with a beautiful burst of exasperated noise. “I should know now / that I shouldn’t push you away”, Dominico Palermo stretches each syllable to its limits as if there can be no other way to drive the message home. We hear no promise of resolution – the damage is irreversible.

A little later, we meet another beautiful noise jam intro. ‘A.C.D (Abcessive Compulsive Disorder)’ is a glorious, self-loathing dissection of the end of a relationship, setting casually brutal imagery against compositions that serve as more than a passing nod to Nirvana. ‘Eaten by Worms’ may be an even more blatant homage to mid-Nineties alt-rock, with its jagged guitars, fierce percussion and soft-loud dynamics.

‘Nineteen-Ninety Heaven,’ on the other hand, falls directly into shoegaze territory, with references to Ride evident in the percussion. The composition here is nearly hymnal, and Dominico’s somnolent tone easy to misinterpret as tranquil, until you hear “I’m living in a dream world / life’s a nightmare.”

Like its predecessor, Nothing choose to close this album with the title track. The song ‘Tired of Tomorrow’ is little like the bulk of the album – or indeed anything Nothing have ever done before – exuding both vulnerability and defeatism- qualities heightened exquisitely with the support of a cello and violin. We’d met the same helplessness before when Guilty of Everything left us with the lines “I’ve given up / But you shoot anyway / I’m guilty of everything” ‘Tired of Tomorrow’ is less introspective and speaks to us directly, as sorrowful friends and comrades who are all “stranded in today”. “Rejoice if we are allied”, it says, “our everything Is empty on the inside”.

There’s no romance on this album. Nothing shine a stark white light on reality. As they always have.

Originally published on Drowned in Sound

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Feature

Broken tools and bent nails: why Nothing matters

Maybe the reason we’re so drawn to Nothing is that, like us, they don’t preach happy endings.

Maybe it’s because, like us, they don’t encourage a life of success driven by misattributed quotations.

Maybe it’s because they make it OK to be average.
And to give up.
To live a life of quiet mediocrity.
To fail and to stay failed.
To let go.

I’m built to bleed
Plan my ruin guiltlessly
Another John who’s lost his head
I’m a bent nail
You’ve got no use for me
A monster for eternity

 

Maybe it’s because they confirm what you’ve always suspected.
That it’s not going to get better.

And I hate
Everything you’re saying.
Watch out for those
Who dare to say
That everything
Will be OK.

 

They validate our solitude.
And the outliers among us.
Our obligation to exist.
To wait.
And to vanish.

Outside the door the world’s alive.
I’ll stay and hide on the other side.

 

See also: Built to Bleed

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Discover Feature

serve cold: bloody knives

bloody knives are a band after my own heart.

There’s never been a group more suited to soundtracking the cold-blooded crime I will one day commit.

Not since ‘To Fix The Gash In Your Head‘ has a group succeeded in capturing the serenity that accompanies a perfectly planned and executed retribution.

In fact, Preston Maddox‘s languid vocals only serve to enhance the careless loathing a typical bloody knives track spits out.

Similar to how Oliver Ackermann’s vocals on ‘To Fix the Gash…’ are less furious and more disconcertingly calm when he declares ‘I’ll just wait for you to turn around/and kick your head in‘.

And not unlike Archive‘s disaffected chant ‘there’s a place in hell with your name on the seat/with a spike through the chair just to make it complete‘.

So does Maddox ever so serenely dare you to ‘tell me I’m wrong‘ on Burn it all Down

Or politely inform you that there’s ‘blood in your mouth‘ on blood.

Or sweetly croon that he’s ‘waiting for you to die‘ on DEATH.

The fulfilment that comes with the manufacture and execution of pre-meditated violence is a recurrent theme throughout the bloody knives discography.

[Pre-order I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This]

bloody knives do not make music for the hot-headed – those who might not hesitate to throw themselves headfirst into a shouting match or a street fight.

They do make music for the sort of person who, on seeing you looking a bit high strung, offers you comfort and a coupon for a relaxing spa session and then bakes you alive in the sauna.

Because isn’t the glee on ‘Buried Alive’ not just the smug contentment that comes with suffocating someone to death while simultaneously disposing of their body?

You only attain this clean efficiency with time and reflection. Not through impulsive action.

There’s a lesson to be learned from all of this.

Guard your fury.
Plan its release.
Let its consequences stretch across weeks, months or years.
And let your parting note read:

‘This will be your last mistake‘


 

Buy albums.

Pre-order I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This.

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Album Review

The Veldt – The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur: The Drake Equation

Twin brothers Daniel and Danny Chavez of The Veldt have been making music without a break since they were in junior high school in the early Eighties. A penchant for whirlpool melodies and joyously meandering guitars left them with a confused audience (‘this isn’t reggae!’) and displeased labels (‘What do you mean you like the Cocteau Twins?’).

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that The Veldt have put as much energy into breaking out of the moulds they’ve been forced to squeeze into as they have into making the music they want to. On the behest of their label, they briefly changed their name to Apollo Heights because – so it was said – ‘The Veldt’ just wasn’t cutting it with the audience. They cheekily titled the only Apollo Heights album ever made White Music for Black People before switching back to their original moniker.

Ironically, despite enjoying the patronage of none other than Robin Guthrie, the Veldt remained relatively anonymous for most of their career. They’ve toured with The Jesus and Mary Chain and played support for Lush and Babes in Toyland without ever receiving the same degree of attention and adulation as their peers. Daniel recalls their time in the UK in the early Nineties – a period spent in the casual company of Blur, Aztec Camera and Echo and the Bunnymen It was then, at the Portobello Hotel, that the Clash’s Mick Jones greeted the band with a cheery ‘you’re Robin’s boys!’ while the twins were preparing to record their first album with Guthrie.

It was while they were recording this never-released album that shoegaze legends A.R. Kane (among others), stopped by the studio. Today, they’re pulling a cameo on ‘And It’s You’ – the final track on The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur.

It’s difficult to call this EP a comeback for The Veldt considering how the brothers didn’t ever stop making music, but there’s no doubt the A.R. Kane influence, the familiarly swirling guitars, and Daniel’s trademark falsetto make the EP taste particularly nostalgic.

The Guthrie may be strong with the opening track, but ‘Sanctified’ serves more as an ‘up yours!’ than anything else. You can easily imagine this track, with its choral overtones and closing ‘Hallelujah’s, as the sort of thing the Veldt’s initial audience and major labels would have been sold on. ‘This,’ they would say ‘is what a couple of black kids SHOULD sound like!’

Their exultation would have been short-lived as ‘In A Quiet Room’ sees the Veldt bringing in glorious swirling riffs to accompany the dreamiest verses and sweetest refrain to emerge from the 2010s. ‘A Token’ is another charmer, underlining delicate vocals with a characteristically ‘Souvlaki Space Station’ drone, ebbing and flowing gently through the entirety of the track’s five minutes.

Jim Reid was among those to come up to the Veldt when they were in the UK to say ‘I really like your vinyls.’ It took two more decades and an article in the Guardian for the rest of the world to catch up. Today Danny and Daniel find themselves preparing to go on tour supporting The Brian Jonestown Massacre ahead of the launch of the former’s full-length album (to be released later this year).

‘We’ve been called ‘difficult’ to work with,’ Daniel warned Anton, before sealing the deal. ‘Newcombe’s reply surprises no one: ‘I like difficult.’

Welcome home, The Veldt.

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Feature

Which LSD and the Search for God album is right for you? An interactive guide

It’s been 9 long years since LSD and the Search for God blessed us with their distortion soaked self-titled EP and a lot has changed in the interim. Heaven is a Place with its steady walls of psychedelia in lieu of fluid curtains of reverb is the mark of a band that has truly evolved. Adapted. Matured. Grown up. it is the mark of a band that has recently recruited a Brian Jonestown Massacre member (hello, Ricky Maymi!).

Between the shoegaze-by-numbers self-titled and the swirl-heavy Heaven is a Place, we have two wildly disparate EPs before us. How do we know which one is best-suited to each of our unique, inimitable personalities?

I daresay we have found ourselves in the midst of a most egregious dilemma.

Fortunately, I have dedicated the last two weeks to intimately acquainting myself with both these records by playing them at very high volumes very late into the night and I believe I am now qualified to create and share an interactive guide that will solve all of our problems and assuage all of our fears.

Here’s the official guide to figuring out which LSD and the Search for God album is right for you:

LSD Guide

YOUR RESULTS!

Mostly column 1: You’re a cynical bastard (that’s Diogenes in the picture) who smokes up to cool down, prefers listening to bands that make a lot of noise before anyone knows who they are but drops them the moment they go mainstream, i.e. someone apart from you knows them.

LSD and the Search for God’s self-titled EP is the album for you.

Your life in a lyric: Be careful what you wish for/Because it might come true (Starting Over)

Mostly column 2: You’re one of those irritating existential types who relies on psychedelics to distract you from your own impending mortality. You listen to a band’s later albums first, but assure everyone you knew who they were before they became who they are.

Heaven is a Place is the album for you.

Your life in a lyric: One thing I know/I’m gonna die (Without You)

—

Do the options in both columns look equally tempting? Dear god, you must be insufferable in person. Let’s be BFFs! Get your LSD and the Search for God goods here and we can be pricks – with unmatchable taste in music – together for all eternity.

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Feature

Video Premiere: We Meet in Dreams – The Microdance

cheryltmd

It’s no secret that New Waves of Hope has been the album I’ve been looking forward to the most this year. Not least because I’ve known it to be in the making for about two years, and living off snippets, and whatever sneaky crumbs Alex threw my way.

New Waves of Hope released earlier this year, and while I was too busy earning a living (down with capitalism) to write a full blown article about it, I have still managed to land the chance to premiere the video for ‘We Meet In Dreams.’

‘Inspired’ by Mario 64 if Mario 64 had drug dealers and shots of Mario staring pensively at the user on a Shoreditch sidewalk, the video’s making full use of the cool-factor brought in by TMD’s skateboarding bassist, Cheryl, and the unshakeable Gavin (not even clomping through a metre-deep lake fazes him).

Where and why Alex/Mario got those overalls will remain a mystery forever.