acb

Tonight, I went to the Veronica Falls gig at the Islington Assembly Hall. When I arrived, I was surprised to find that the first band on were “Debsey and Rachel”.

It did turn out to be Debsey and Rachel from Dolly Mixture, much to my pleasant surprise. They only did about five songs, playing guitar and singing, taking turns on verses and doing harmonies in the choruses. I imagine they would have been an influence on The Softies (though Debsey seems to have had leanings towards a mid-1960s style).

(Debsey's more recent (i.e., 1990s) band, Birdie, are playing late in May; I won't be able to go, though I hope that they will play again.)

The other support band were Comet Gain; I'm not the biggest fan of them, but they played a few good songs (they opened with their answer to Orange Juice's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, which one hears in DJ sets a fair bit). (I imagine those brought up on 1980s Scottish indie might get more out of them.)

Veronica Falls were great. They played a full set, and then did a 3-song encore. Right now, they'd be one of my five or so favourite London bands to see; they play a sort of angular indiepop, with influences in the Brooklyn C86 revival (think Vivian Girls/Crystal Stilts), surf rock and post-punk. They have two albums, and played songs from both; the new material sounds a bit sharper and tighter.

Over the past few months, I have been working (in my copious spare time) on a remix of a track from the last Momus album. I have hinted at it here and elsewhere, though not said much. I finished it last week and sent it to imomus, who liked what I did with it. (In his words, it "captures the original and carries it deep into dub reggae's 'jungle of wires'".) So, anyway, here it is:




I may have some other remixes for other people out soon.

This evening, I went to the Piano Magic/July Skies/Epic45 gig at the Luminaire. It was great; all three bands are really good (if you like atmospheric shoegazey music).

July Skies played some songs from The English Cold, their concept album about the shadow of war over the English countryside in 1939, as well as some new songs which will end up on a new album, due out next year (finances permitting). The new songs were pretty good, and I look forward to hearing the new album.

The Piano Magic set was great. They started off with I Am The Sub-Librarian, following into No Closure, and taking it from there. Think driving grooves, vocal harmonies and the odd wall of oddly melodious howling guitar. One new song they had was titled England's Always Better (as you're pulling away), which started off sounding a bit like Black Box Recorder and then went into somewhat darker Piano Magic territory; it was basically their attempt at that classic theme, the malaise-at-the-heart-of-Englishness song. As this was their 10th anniversary gig, there was a brief interruption between songs as some members of the audience presented the band with a chocolate cake (which, after the gig, was cut into slices and made available at the bar) and sang Happy Birthday. Then the band resumed, playing Password (complete with its massive buildup of an ending).

Just listening to justlikehoney's show on RRR, in the background. So far, pretty cool; Bill Hicks or some similar (un-)American comedian George Carlin, followed by an Indian percussive vocal track, and now an amen-break-based track that sounds like it was made on an Amiga tracker. (It seems to use the same samples as the "Jesus On E's" tracker tunes), then a bunch of new-waveish tracks, finishing with V. Spy V. Spy's "Mugshot". Not a bad start.

Observations on listening to Mark Radcliffe's show tonight on BBC2:

• Gogol Bordello sound like Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen crossed with a NME new-wave revival band.
• The new Belle & Sebastian single, Funny Little Frog, sounds nothing like Belle & Sebastian. There is nothing particularly fey about it (other than the title, of course); the vocals are strong and confident and it bounces along energetically. It could easily be, say, The Thrills or The Magic Numbers, or anything in the top 40 in the two decades before Stock/Aitken/Waterman and Dr. Dre. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you; it's a pretty classy piece of pop craftsmanship, though don't expect Lord Anthony or The State I Am In.

(xposted to thenulldevice:)

A parcel just arrived from Australia, containing four CDs:

• Francis Plagne - "Idle Bones" (rather quirky multi-instrumental art-pop, interspersed with lots of environmental recordings; it's a bit like something from a Montréal post-rock collective only with the moroseness replaced by a jaunty playfulness. Well, actually, it's a set of enviromnental recordings and drones with three or so jaunty songs scattered between them, though, given that it's from Synæsthesia, that is hardly surprising)
• Machine Translations - "Wolf on a String"
• The Winter Ship - "Teardrops" (rather nice Melbourne shoegazer/post-rock, with more than a passing resemblance to Mogwai)
• and the Australian edition of Camera Obscura's "Underachievers Please Try Harder", with its bonus tracks ("San Francisco Song" and "Amigo Mio", for what it's worth); that came out in 2004, but I was too busy packing to move to London to buy it at the time.

Thanks to my sister for doing the rounds of Melbourne's record shops to pick those up for me.

I'm now listening to Nada Surf's cover of OMD's If You Leave. It's rather good. (Thanks, trayce.)

Entirely by coincidence, a few days ago, I ordered "Pretending To See The Future", the indiepop tribute to OMD, from the Shelflife $1 CD sale, along with a stack of other discs. It should arrive within a week.

The first OMD song I remember hearing was Dreaming. It was playing, quietly, on a ferry on a school trip to Tasmania in 1991. I didn't know what it was, but remembered it when I next heard it. It appealed to me for the same reason that New Order did: the combination of polished electronics, catchy pop melodies, and the human condition. My favourite OMD song now, though, would probably be Souvenir; nicely understated, in exactly the way that the shiny, sassy Pepsi Pop of today isn't, with a good pop melody, and notes of various things (closure, regret, bittersweetness), yet sufficiently enigmatic to not stake its territory in any one small part of the human condition. Brittle Stars' cover of it is also good, with a cello and some shoegazey touches, and Moby's remix/cover is surprisingly non-sucky.

[Poll #608550]

A copy of Den Baron's The Soundtrack Of My Life arrived in the post last night. I ordered it on the strength of various tracks I had heard around the place (the Airpop Terminal 2 compilation that was everywhere for a while, and the Seven Summers: International Pop Vol. 2 compilation).

It's quite decent summery jangly bossa-pop; a bit like the Sounds of Leamington Spa compilations or various Sarah bands, with a few 60s soul influences, some synth strings and the odd thrift-shop keyboard. It's not too far from Spearmint (who are also on Apricot outside of the UK). It has its ups and downs, and the vocals sound a bit awkward in places, though that's all C86, innit? The singer's German accent (think thin indie-boy vocals, not sternly Teutonic goth-metal) adds to the C86-ish shambolicity of the package.

When I get back into DJing at indie-pop nights (possibly when Tigermilking gets back off the ground), I'll probably spin some tracks from this; alternatively, I could see about sneaking a run of twee jangle-pop into a Lounge AC30 set (once that gets out of hiatus); late in the set, when people have had a bit to drink, one could probably get away with a lot worse.

A package arrived in the mail today for me, containing the new EP from BAM BAM. (They're that really tight pop/rock band (they call themselves "Swank Rock") from Melbourne, who sound somewhere between Transvision Vamp, 1960s garage rock and a bit of Lush; they're fronted by Kristie Montagu, who wrote a best-selling book about op shops in Melbourne and does other cool things.) I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, though look forward to doing so.

Tonight, I went to Bethnal Green, and caught most of a band called The Kissing Time. They were enjoyable, in a post-C86/Library Records sort of way; they sounded a bit like Tugboat (mostly the vocal harmonies). A few of their songs were a bit bland and AOR-ballady; one of them sounded not unlike 1927. I'm told that this is because one of them is into Coldplay.

The first My Favorite album, Love at Absolute Zero, arrived in the mail today. It's similar to The Happiest Days Of Our Lives/the Joan of Arc trilogy: a combination of synthpop keyboards, live drums, gloriously jangly guitars, the odd dub influence, upbeat pop tunes and beautifully heartbreakingly poetic lyrics, like some combination of OMD, New Order and The Smiths, only with better songwriting than most, if not all, of those. (IMHO, as a songwriter, Michael Grace Jr. holds his own alongside 1980s Morrissey quite comfortably.)

My Favorite are increasingly living up to their name in my book. There are bands you like, and then there are bands you feel passionately about, see whenever they play (assuming they still exist), whose CDs you end up buying in large quantities to give to people and whose tracks end up on mix tapes; the bands which are transcendently brilliant because their music says something profound (whether with words or otherwise). For me, there have been a handful of the latter: The Paradise Motel, Slowdive, The Field Mice and ninetynine. And it looks like there is now another one.