CFTPA exude a rare prettiness, fragility and child-like naivety throughout this record of heart-broken, yet recovering, electro-pop, to render it not nearly as depressing as you might expect, given the name and all. In fact, a broken heart could find great comfort here: an understanding ear, a kindred sprit, a freshly washed pillow, a big, bastard bowl of Alpen, things that keep you safe from harm.
This music is also, thanks to Owen Ashworth’s gruff, lumbersome vocal delivery, to be enjoyed by those who try to like The Postal Service or Death Cab For Cutie, but can’t because it’s just so wet and so lame and for pansies. This is a lesson in how to be depressed like Johnny Cash with a dodgy keyboard and an Amstrad, like a man, a big, bastard man; and it works, sporadically, as a starting point.
It’s not a new lover, not yet, but we all know that takes time.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Album Review. They Shoot Horses: The Boo Hoo Hoo Boo Album.
Imagine you are climbing a fence, a five foot metal fence, and as you jump off the top of the fence, to reach the other side, your foot gets twisted around and impaled on a spike on said fence and you, hapless fence-jumper, are left hanging, by your ankle. Imagine lifting yourself and thus your own foot off the spike by grabbing hold of the fence whilst upside down and falling onto the floor of what turns out to be a graveyard, in agony, unable to move, having soiled yourself, waiting for the emergency services.
Imagine the music that would enter your head in this situation (excluding, the obvious, ‘I Will Survive’); perhaps trumpet-shredding, electro-cabaret up-down, up-down pop that’s part-time circus, part-time birthday, part-time funeral music sung over by a man who sounds like he feels your pain but manages to channel it into a legible yelp that is at the same time admirable, abrasive, dangerous and camp. Soon we might all shoot horses. Eating horse is legal in France. Welcome to my world.
Imagine the music that would enter your head in this situation (excluding, the obvious, ‘I Will Survive’); perhaps trumpet-shredding, electro-cabaret up-down, up-down pop that’s part-time circus, part-time birthday, part-time funeral music sung over by a man who sounds like he feels your pain but manages to channel it into a legible yelp that is at the same time admirable, abrasive, dangerous and camp. Soon we might all shoot horses. Eating horse is legal in France. Welcome to my world.
Album Review. Tapes n' Tapes: The Loon
Hype is a curious phenomenon, containing the invariable inevitability of being a let-down. It is, as a rule, best avoided, as a buyer or a creator before the familiar pattern of: I can’t wait/I used to love it/I couldn’t give less of a shit, un-sheathes itself.
Tapes n’ Tapes however manage to avoid all this, for now, with tactful dodgings away from the correct fill to place here or the juiciest lyrical loop to initiate a sing-along there, by scrapping the flab, fucking off the tom-toms and emerging a snare-and-bass-drum-only indie-minimalism efficiency machine with all the necessarily intricate subtleties, time signature changes and a seeming myriad of highly literate yarns covering pirate love, starved sailor love, bitter love, love love, mum love and asceticism that mean they might just be the most interesting band with a ginger front-man, on the planet.
‘Insistor’ is at least the best single this year and will have you dancing and shouting in the garden before you can say “mmmm, a brand new, shiny, lascivious Pavement”.
Tapes n’ Tapes however manage to avoid all this, for now, with tactful dodgings away from the correct fill to place here or the juiciest lyrical loop to initiate a sing-along there, by scrapping the flab, fucking off the tom-toms and emerging a snare-and-bass-drum-only indie-minimalism efficiency machine with all the necessarily intricate subtleties, time signature changes and a seeming myriad of highly literate yarns covering pirate love, starved sailor love, bitter love, love love, mum love and asceticism that mean they might just be the most interesting band with a ginger front-man, on the planet.
‘Insistor’ is at least the best single this year and will have you dancing and shouting in the garden before you can say “mmmm, a brand new, shiny, lascivious Pavement”.
Benicassim FIB Heineken Festival 2006 Review.
Benicassim, I would imagine, is pretty quiet for the majority of the calendar year, it’s occupants doing nothing much other than fishing, attending bull-fights or smoking cheap cigarettes and perhaps preparing for the now annual FIB Festival in the middle of July that sees the population of this small sea-side town double. The invasion is largely of the British, a phenomenon I am led to believe has only recently developed since FIB’s selling of it’s arse to the NME, but one that is so prominent in the cafes, on the beach, in the campsites and in the arena itself, that it’s easy to feel like one has been sent away on an uber-trendy, England-is-cool-as-fuck-and-we-know-it, 18-25’s lager camp. Given that many car hire companies in Barcelona hadn’t even heard of Benicassim the town, let alone the festival, this transformation of a relatively rural unknown is pretty good going.
Cope with this though and you’re in for a treat. The campsites are also English heavy, but this could have a lot to do with the searing heat and the Spaniard’s knowledge that perhaps an apartment is the way forward and if you, the intrepid, integral, culture thirsty Englishmen, can last beyond the Heineken drinkers 4am bedtime, the continental festival experience comes into its own. Programmed music lasting until eight in the morning is exactly what the continental festival goer must expect and embrace, and it is here that the locals come out to play: shirts off, tanned as fuck, pills at the ready…one way ticket on the rave train.
The arena itself is purpose-built for the festival. By this I mean that the site was built solely for the festival; I’m not suggesting that Glastonbury, for example, just plonks 120,000 people wherever it feels like without building a designated area, if that was what I was suggesting, that would be ridiculous and that would make me an idiot. I am suggesting that the pre-meditated aspect of the arena has an effect on the general vibe of proceedings. Festivals are a strange breed, and depending on time slots, stages, weather and the like, the worst in a band can just as easily be produced as the best. We have all seen one of our favourite bands look like crap tossers in the middle of the day, on the main stage, at a big festival, where they just did not belong.
Whether for better or for worse, Benicassim manages to avoid much of this. No mud, just concrete; carefully positioned stages; meticulous lighting and sound-systems good enough for a decent venue, mean that very few external factors remain to destroy a bands live reputation. British festivals could learn a lot from this aspect of Benicassim; “but it takes away the soul,” some may argue. No it doesn’t, it is better in every way.
Five days of music and an all-night schedule would probably account for the first nights main act Scissor Sisters appearance at 3am, whose remarkably overrated camp, glam-pop managed to successfully bore the arse off the crowd for an hour; the lack of alternatives at this stage in proceedings presumably accounting for the majority that remained for the seemingly much anticipated Filthy Gorgeous in the encore…even spam tastes good if you’ve been eating shit for a week.
Praise the Lord then for pioneering disc spinner Erol Alkan, producer of The Long Blondes and re-mixer of Hot Chip, Mylo and Death From Above 1979, playing the sunrise in with his blend of dance and rock…everyone’s a winner.
Friday heralded the arrival of a revived Babyshambles in the electronico tent (decked out with a sprinkler system releasing a light film of water for sweaty ravers) complete with Time For Heroes and Shane Mcgowan joining Doherty for a rendition of Dirty Ol’ Town that was a joy for anyone still praying for the reckless scamp to recover from his tabloid-consuming problems.
The Walkmen followed with a set so filled with bitterness, fury and tentative contemplation that you chose to ignore the fact that half of the crowd only went to see them play The Rat. The fact that The Rat is a great song and that The Walkmen do it justice every time they play it, is another reason for a solidly blind eye.
The short walk from here to the main stage briefly saw The Ordinary Boys resort to a Ramones cover to try and regain that credibility lost by a bit of fame and a stint in a glorified prison, before watching The Futureheads churn out their brand of energetic, garage indie to a willing and participating audience, the nationality of which became abundantly clear when Barry Hyde’s shout out to Sunderland was actually met with a cheer. At a Spanish festival. I shit you not.
Roll on the incomparable, all-conquering Pixies; met as ever with hero-worship and adoration, the festivities were cut short mid-set for some seemingly essential re-enforcement of the front barriers that took half an hour and left the mighty foursome with little time to re-gurgitate their greatest hits at a slower pace, amidst requests to the crowd to not push forward. Far from wanting anyone to come to any harm at any of these events, this couldn’t help but be a disappointment.
The cloud of which The Strokes provided the silver-lining to, pumping out glorious pop song after glorious pop song and confirming themselves as a genuinely great, big bastard rock band, the kind of band that can follow the Pixies and positively out-shine them… without saying a fucking word. Pure class. If Julian Casablancas isn’t the coolest man on the planet, I’ll buy a ticket to see Scissor Sisters.
Saturday bore Morrissey, a musical giant dressed in orange pouring treacle-coated hopeless romanticism down the gaping ear cavities of a gleeful crowd of ever-faithfuls…you either love him or hate him. The same goes for Rufus Wainwright in the Vodafone fib club, entertaining the love-lorn with a Leonard Cohen song that everyone thinks Jeff Buckley wrote, very clever.
Franz Ferdinand are properly big these days and their songs match both the setting and the crowds; who would ever have thought on the first listen to their debut record that Matinee would become a stadium-rock monster within three years. Not I.
2 Many DJ’s entertained for two and a half hours with their bringing it up/taking it down/bringing it up/taking it down/bringing it up, add the bass…party! method of entertainment, mixing in Aphex Twin, The Prodigy, and The Arcade Fire. These gents are seriously good. Properly good dance DJ’s are hard to come buy, accessible ones even less so, a treasure indeed.
Sunday kicked of proper with the all-embracing and utterly calculated idiocy of Madness who appeared to go down better than a litre and a half of ice-cold aqua at a boiling hot festival in Spain…
Main stage habits were abandoned at this phase for the Vodafone fib club tent and the hopelessly under-whelming We Are Scientists who seem to want to sound a bit like The Futureheads, but can’t because they’re from America and as such have no idea what it could possibly be like to write funny songs about how shit it is to live in the North-east of England.
This mattered not though, and any band or indeed any individual, can be forgiven for existing if you precede the skeptical, cynical joy of Art Brut. Unrelenting in their cutting observations, their humor and their brilliance, Eddie Argos led his band of far-too-clever-by-far compadre’s through a set by his own admission ‘three times as long as their only album’, and even did a We Are Scientists cover to confirm the ridiculousness of it all.
Herbert and Jennifer Cardini back in the electronico tent provided the electronic, bassy prelude to the main stage finale at 03.40 that was The Rakes. Has there ever been an indie rock band, that isn’t Madness, so intent on creating spiky-indie tunes just to dance to. Their was the most god-damn fun loving experience of my entire life and the fact that there was about 1,000 people in a space built for 10,000 mattered not a jot, not to me, or the band; long live The Rakes, their sense of fun and their willingness to dance their tits off at half past three in the morning.
Benicassim in many ways might just be the best festival in all of history. It has everything you could ever want from a holidy, let alone a festival. The beach is stunning, the beer is cold (although it is Heineken), there are water sprinklers in the tents, highlights of Benicassim’s been and gone play while you wait for the next band, you can buy paella in the arena and the music goes on all night. The only problem is, it is quite possibly the best British festival ever. Many people venture from blighty to get a feel of the continent, a different way of life, a different culture, and more importantly (presumably because the British have a tendency of being complete wankers), different people. Exit festival in Serbia for example is riddled with characters from the Eastern Bloc. As well as being held in a fortress, you don’t have to try to hard to get away from someone shouting “‘aving it large” or “I am completely off my tits” in a cockney accent. On the continent it is; continental it is not.
Cope with this though and you’re in for a treat. The campsites are also English heavy, but this could have a lot to do with the searing heat and the Spaniard’s knowledge that perhaps an apartment is the way forward and if you, the intrepid, integral, culture thirsty Englishmen, can last beyond the Heineken drinkers 4am bedtime, the continental festival experience comes into its own. Programmed music lasting until eight in the morning is exactly what the continental festival goer must expect and embrace, and it is here that the locals come out to play: shirts off, tanned as fuck, pills at the ready…one way ticket on the rave train.
The arena itself is purpose-built for the festival. By this I mean that the site was built solely for the festival; I’m not suggesting that Glastonbury, for example, just plonks 120,000 people wherever it feels like without building a designated area, if that was what I was suggesting, that would be ridiculous and that would make me an idiot. I am suggesting that the pre-meditated aspect of the arena has an effect on the general vibe of proceedings. Festivals are a strange breed, and depending on time slots, stages, weather and the like, the worst in a band can just as easily be produced as the best. We have all seen one of our favourite bands look like crap tossers in the middle of the day, on the main stage, at a big festival, where they just did not belong.
Whether for better or for worse, Benicassim manages to avoid much of this. No mud, just concrete; carefully positioned stages; meticulous lighting and sound-systems good enough for a decent venue, mean that very few external factors remain to destroy a bands live reputation. British festivals could learn a lot from this aspect of Benicassim; “but it takes away the soul,” some may argue. No it doesn’t, it is better in every way.
Five days of music and an all-night schedule would probably account for the first nights main act Scissor Sisters appearance at 3am, whose remarkably overrated camp, glam-pop managed to successfully bore the arse off the crowd for an hour; the lack of alternatives at this stage in proceedings presumably accounting for the majority that remained for the seemingly much anticipated Filthy Gorgeous in the encore…even spam tastes good if you’ve been eating shit for a week.
Praise the Lord then for pioneering disc spinner Erol Alkan, producer of The Long Blondes and re-mixer of Hot Chip, Mylo and Death From Above 1979, playing the sunrise in with his blend of dance and rock…everyone’s a winner.
Friday heralded the arrival of a revived Babyshambles in the electronico tent (decked out with a sprinkler system releasing a light film of water for sweaty ravers) complete with Time For Heroes and Shane Mcgowan joining Doherty for a rendition of Dirty Ol’ Town that was a joy for anyone still praying for the reckless scamp to recover from his tabloid-consuming problems.
The Walkmen followed with a set so filled with bitterness, fury and tentative contemplation that you chose to ignore the fact that half of the crowd only went to see them play The Rat. The fact that The Rat is a great song and that The Walkmen do it justice every time they play it, is another reason for a solidly blind eye.
The short walk from here to the main stage briefly saw The Ordinary Boys resort to a Ramones cover to try and regain that credibility lost by a bit of fame and a stint in a glorified prison, before watching The Futureheads churn out their brand of energetic, garage indie to a willing and participating audience, the nationality of which became abundantly clear when Barry Hyde’s shout out to Sunderland was actually met with a cheer. At a Spanish festival. I shit you not.
Roll on the incomparable, all-conquering Pixies; met as ever with hero-worship and adoration, the festivities were cut short mid-set for some seemingly essential re-enforcement of the front barriers that took half an hour and left the mighty foursome with little time to re-gurgitate their greatest hits at a slower pace, amidst requests to the crowd to not push forward. Far from wanting anyone to come to any harm at any of these events, this couldn’t help but be a disappointment.
The cloud of which The Strokes provided the silver-lining to, pumping out glorious pop song after glorious pop song and confirming themselves as a genuinely great, big bastard rock band, the kind of band that can follow the Pixies and positively out-shine them… without saying a fucking word. Pure class. If Julian Casablancas isn’t the coolest man on the planet, I’ll buy a ticket to see Scissor Sisters.
Saturday bore Morrissey, a musical giant dressed in orange pouring treacle-coated hopeless romanticism down the gaping ear cavities of a gleeful crowd of ever-faithfuls…you either love him or hate him. The same goes for Rufus Wainwright in the Vodafone fib club, entertaining the love-lorn with a Leonard Cohen song that everyone thinks Jeff Buckley wrote, very clever.
Franz Ferdinand are properly big these days and their songs match both the setting and the crowds; who would ever have thought on the first listen to their debut record that Matinee would become a stadium-rock monster within three years. Not I.
2 Many DJ’s entertained for two and a half hours with their bringing it up/taking it down/bringing it up/taking it down/bringing it up, add the bass…party! method of entertainment, mixing in Aphex Twin, The Prodigy, and The Arcade Fire. These gents are seriously good. Properly good dance DJ’s are hard to come buy, accessible ones even less so, a treasure indeed.
Sunday kicked of proper with the all-embracing and utterly calculated idiocy of Madness who appeared to go down better than a litre and a half of ice-cold aqua at a boiling hot festival in Spain…
Main stage habits were abandoned at this phase for the Vodafone fib club tent and the hopelessly under-whelming We Are Scientists who seem to want to sound a bit like The Futureheads, but can’t because they’re from America and as such have no idea what it could possibly be like to write funny songs about how shit it is to live in the North-east of England.
This mattered not though, and any band or indeed any individual, can be forgiven for existing if you precede the skeptical, cynical joy of Art Brut. Unrelenting in their cutting observations, their humor and their brilliance, Eddie Argos led his band of far-too-clever-by-far compadre’s through a set by his own admission ‘three times as long as their only album’, and even did a We Are Scientists cover to confirm the ridiculousness of it all.
Herbert and Jennifer Cardini back in the electronico tent provided the electronic, bassy prelude to the main stage finale at 03.40 that was The Rakes. Has there ever been an indie rock band, that isn’t Madness, so intent on creating spiky-indie tunes just to dance to. Their was the most god-damn fun loving experience of my entire life and the fact that there was about 1,000 people in a space built for 10,000 mattered not a jot, not to me, or the band; long live The Rakes, their sense of fun and their willingness to dance their tits off at half past three in the morning.
Benicassim in many ways might just be the best festival in all of history. It has everything you could ever want from a holidy, let alone a festival. The beach is stunning, the beer is cold (although it is Heineken), there are water sprinklers in the tents, highlights of Benicassim’s been and gone play while you wait for the next band, you can buy paella in the arena and the music goes on all night. The only problem is, it is quite possibly the best British festival ever. Many people venture from blighty to get a feel of the continent, a different way of life, a different culture, and more importantly (presumably because the British have a tendency of being complete wankers), different people. Exit festival in Serbia for example is riddled with characters from the Eastern Bloc. As well as being held in a fortress, you don’t have to try to hard to get away from someone shouting “‘aving it large” or “I am completely off my tits” in a cockney accent. On the continent it is; continental it is not.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Testing testing, one two, one two.
This is history. Right here, right now, this is history.
Bored of a tuesday, what to do...set up a blog. Why the bloody hell not.
Bored of a tuesday, what to do...set up a blog. Why the bloody hell not.
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