Sons and Daughters ‘This Gift’

Sons and Daughters

‘This Gift’
Domino

Album title track ‘This Gift’ showcases Sons and Daughters rough and ready, folk-flavoured, indie-rock, much in the guise of bassist Ailidh Lennon’s husbands’ band Idlewild. ‘Ah-hoo’s’ decorate the sing-along chorus, whilst the guitar heavy raucous rolls by. Yet it’s an ever so slightly disappointing effort from a hotly-tipped band, albeit one that will inevitably cause explosions on the dance floor when they play it live.

Dave Allen

seen here first

Black Lips – ‘Bad Kids / Leroy Faster’

Black Lips

‘Bad Kids / Leroy Faster’
Good Bad Not Evil

Fresh out of Atlanta, Georgia come the NME-approved ramshackle, rock n’ roll styling’s of Black Lips. ‘Bad Kids’, a two-minute slice of infectious pop with punk flavoured lyrics based on band members’ experience with juvenile detention centres. Inevitably it has more than a faint whiff of Ramones about it, but desperately deserves to be a nod-along, summer anthem. Fantastic. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for ‘Leroy Faster’, the other half of this double A-side. A psychedelic meander exhumed from the Velvet Underground’s cutting room floor, its over-familiar 1960’s feel simply falls flat.

Dave Allen

Late of the Pier Barfly – Birmingham 6th May 2008

Late of the Pier

Barfly – Birmingham

6th May 2008

Glowsticks aplenty as the nutty electro sounds of Late of the Pier invade Barfly for Levi’s Ones to Watch

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The problem with scenester gigs these days is they’re full of cunts. No I take that back, scenester gigs have always been full of cunts. As brilliant as Late of the Pier later turn out to be, their admittedly generic, sub-Stereophonics, pub-rock support The Displacements attract an embarrassingly muted response from the glow-stick adorned teenagers here for Late of the Pier.

more pointless swearing here…

Operator Please supporting Lightspeed Champion Birmingham Academy 2 – Birmingham 1st May 2008

Operator Please supporting Lightspeed Champion

Birmingham Academy 2 – Birmingham

1st May 2008

More than just a song about ping-pong…

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Promoted from the diddy Bar Academy to the (slightly) grander (but scummy) surroundings of Birmingham Academy 2, Operator Please are tonight sandwiched between two fellow bands that share their eschewed approach to indie; masters of punctuation Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man. and the unique geek-pop glory of Lightspeed Champion.

more…

long time no see…

I haven’t updated this blog for a while, but will hoprfully get round to it this sometime this weekend for anyone who cares…..

In answer to your questions Dan….

When reviewing bands, I don’t request to review anything I don’t think i’ll like. Although I’m often supplied CD’s I didn’t request, mind, so have reviewed albums by dark metal bands like Dew Scented in the past. It’s easier to write about genres you know than those you’re not, and you can only review things by comparing them to the benchmark of their genre.

I don’t think it’s fair to review things you know you’ll hate just to wallow in the fun of slagging them off (The Business excepted).

Yes, sometimes I am consciously aware of how to start a review before i hear it (if it’s someone i know a lot about them already), although more in a stylistic sense than any form of pre-judgement.

I try not to read other people’s reviews before I review someone’s CD’s, just because you’re opinion (and that’s all a review is) inevitably gets influenced by someone elses. That said, I don’t obsess about it, and once you’ve formed the base of the review, it’s useful to read around the band to inject more life into your own stuff.

Pre-conception is inevitably going to influence your  review, whether something has been hyped to death or made by an unsigned band. It’s fairer to be harsh on a hyped act that has spent millions on PR than an unsigned band with low production quality, selling CD’s from a suitcase.

Is that all Withy?

i think he now writes for playlouder…

Guest single reviews this week by Ruddiger McKunty, long-standing contributor of Art-Fucker Magazine, Swallow.tv and creator of the blog currently spunking wildly across the face of all scenes that matter: VaJ.

THE RAVEONETTES – YOU WANT THE CANDY – FIERCE PANDA
Ruddiger McKunty: So as I was fucking saying to Pete (of the Doherty variety), whilst chasing Charles within the porcelain confines of a Koko cubicle, “the band of the year has to fucking be Scrotum Grinder: just for the way they re-inject the junk of the Velvet Underground into the afterbirth of Leftfield to form a primordial Gang of Four soup.” Just as I was saying to my mate Simon Klaxons, Nu-Rave is almost Nietchian in its colossal projection of intellstellar bodily functions. Like a crack-smoking Stephen Dedalus but fucking mental. The Raveonettes new seven inches of fun really encapsulates this.

AMY MACDONALD – RUN- MELDRAMATIC
Ruddiger McKunty: Smaltzy cack created with the sole purpose of forming the soundtrack to infinite shit Romcom’s where the ditsy fat bird – except she’s not fat, she’s Katie Holmes – spends two hours fingering herself after a ‘jock’, only to discover that he’s a cock smoker, before finally falling for the sensitive geek who’s been sniffing poppers at the back of the bike sheds all along. It’s the total epitome of consumerism, or something.

SIMPLE PLAN – WHEN I’M GONE – ATLANTIC
Ruddiger McKunty: They seriously expect me to review Simple Plan? This radio-friendly, pop-rock jizz is already polluting the ears of the proles. Now they want me to listen and review it in my cocaine stupor? Never shall I lower my perpendicular prose to pick apart a song already be-known to the semen-stained, lager swilling masses. Simple Plan? Simple Cack.

DAVID JORDAN – SUN GOES DOWN – MERCURY

Ruddiger McKunty: See above. Pissing in your eardrums like a vastly overproduced cover of Rosie & Jim. Big Dave has all the hallmarks of an annoying twat who’ll hang around the charts like a venereal disease, then fester in a corner somewhere until he’s exhumed for Celebrity Big Brother or some such cack. Shit.
MY TOYS LIKE ME – ALL OVER MY FACE – DUMB ANGEL

Ruddiger McKunty: A fat slice of filth for all you cunts. According to my source (sitting across the coke dusted desk in front of me) ‘All Over My Face’ echoes the political activist poetry iconic neo-post-punk preacher poet John Twatter, hidden amongst a puddle of ejaculation innuendo. Fuck yes. So good it doesn’t so much blur pigeon holes as rip them apart and butt rape them repeatedly, in the face. There is a new fucking scene in town; the My Toys Like Me musical experience shall hence forth be known as Posttwat-Soulcore. Catch the tragic magic bus early you cunts.
BLACK FRANCIS – THE SEUS – COOKING VINYL

Ruddiger McKunty: “The theme revolves around a lot of NASTY sex, NASTIER death, and beautifully strange birth,” says Frank Black, the cunting legend. Even if in a mid-life crisis reclamation of youth he’s re-appropriated his old Pixies stage name Black Francis. Sounding like The Pixies sharing a crack pipe with the Happy Mondays this is fucked up in so many right ways incomprehensible to the psyche unless you’ve downed ethanol with Hunter S. Thompson.
MIA – PAPER PLANES – X L RECORDINGS

Ruddiger McKunty: Sri Lankan indefinable hip-hop songstress MIA unleashes another bastard of a track from her phenomenal ‘’ long-player. Paper Planes is projected into the stratosphere by a sample ripped torn out of the tattered GI corpse of The Clash’s ‘Straight to Hell’, MIA staggers effortlessly around trip-hop lyrical wordsmithery and shit. This is hip-hop as it should be; packaged up and re-sold to the white people who understand music.
MY AMERICAN HEART – BOY’S! GRAB YOUR GUNS – BODOG MUSIC

Ruddiger McKunty: A misleading Hot Chip intro soon morphs into rugged guitars before piss-poor generic emo vocals tries to finger bang you, in the eye. It’s just like I was saying to Kele Bloc Party; “Where are all these shitty bands from California coming from? I mean, do they breed ‘em on farms out there, or is it God’s way of punishing us for The Corrs!?” I spat, “It’s fucking epidermal shit, and I’m not gonna cunting stand for it anymore!” Kele Bloc Party was simply lost for words as he crossed the street.
DAVE GAHAN – SAW SOMETHING/DEPER + DEEPER – EMI

Ruddiger McKunty: This AA side is why heroin is such a good thing; it’s the eighties in a syringe. Laptop forged tunes, guitar solos aplenty and heavily echoed vocals torn straight from the bumhole of a retro-goth’s rape victim. It’s enough to draw comparisons with Yeats. This is fucking good, at least that’s what fellow celestial being and sometimes writer Steve Buckingham-Smith tells me (I am yet to bathe my ears beneath its salty surface).
VASHTI BUNYAN – SOME THINGS JUST STICK IN YOUR MIND – FAT CAT

Ruddiger McKunty: Locked in obscurity since the 60’s, this peculiar piece of Stones-pop was written by Messer’s Jagger and Richards before being passed onto the enigmatic Vashti. Her faltering falsetto vocals give an ethereal existence to Jagger and Richards dreamy, playful lyrics amidst melodic 60’s pop kitsch.
…As told to Dave Allen

www.subba-cultcha.com

Adam Green: Sixes & Sevens (Album review)

Fifth studio album from the Moldy Peaches frontman is another mixed affair

Adam Green’s a funny old one. After the The Moldy Peaches went on hiatus in 2004, a successful solo career for the quirky, New York songsmith seemed inevitable. Yet after four albums of erratic ‘love it or hate it’ material, Green’s solo work has only briefly captured the anti-folk spark which illuminated the New York scene back in 2001.

At times, when Green whips out bar stool and acoustic guitar, his wry, ironic lyrics create that magical mix of dark cynicality and knowing irony (most notably Friends of Mine’s ‘Jessica Simpson’). But at other times, when Green decides to veer into Phil Spector, big strings, pop territory, his atrocious lounge-jazz vocals come to resemble Vic Reeves’ pub singer (take Sixes & Sevens ‘Morning After Midnight’).
It’s an unusual balance of styles that sits uneasy with the current indie scene, although that perhaps, is the point. With the startling amount of po-faced, image-conscious art-rock flooding the scene at the moment, it’s somewhat refreshing to hear an indie artist taking influences from Al Green and Sly & the Family Stone, rather than the same stale, old post-punk references. That said, it’s still strangely unnerving to hear panpipes on the downright peculiar ‘You Get So Lucky’.

Unconventional seems to be the word, as Sixes & Sevens becomes a name the impression game: Take ‘Tropical Island’, a dreamy bit of melodic pop reminiscent of Elvis’ Hawaii moments. ‘That Sounds Like a Pony’ meanwhile, with it’s short duration and syncopated jazz drums is lifted straight from Minutemen. Yet with that stupid singing voice and dark, but tongue-in-cheek lyrics littering the album, it’s a mental battle to stop yourself thinking that Adam Green isn’t… well, taking the piss a bit.
But that’s not to write off the album, when he forgets his lounge-singer pretentions and narrows the focus there are some genuinely charming moments here, with tender ditty’s like ‘It’s a Fine’ or the gloriously delicate melodics of ‘When a Pretty Face’.

For all those moments though, the biggest sticking point remains: Adam Green really can’t sing. Hardly a revelation, and something that injects an earnest bitter edge into his anti-folk material, but the moment he starts to think he’s Al Green; he might as well be on a cruise ship.
By: Dave Allen

www.subba-cultcha.com

Welcome… and shit

I’ve always thought that most blogs are basically masturbation for the ego, and that’s probably still true, yet I feel like I”m missing out on something. So I thought i’d start up this little blog, if only as a central link to all my other crap steadily clogging up the Internet like dog turds on a rec.

I mostly write about:

• Animation
• Music (CD reviews, band features and live music)
• DVD’s
• Occassional left-wing rants and…
• Games (on special ocassions)