Label Day: Afternoon Records

I'm not going to lie and say that the past few Label Days have been easy. You see, I've got a list (thanks Wikipedia) and I - much like when looking for records or books - just scan until something catches my eye. Not the best method I'll admit, which is why I'm particularly happy with having found today's label.

I think this guy is really good. I can't think who he reminds me of, but his bio says: Comparisons range from Daniel Johnston to Robbie Fulks to The Mountain Goats to Guided by Voices, but he’s just trying to sound like Neil Young. Watch him closely, or he will come to your house and watch you. Here's his page. I like the first track most myself.


I'm having flashbacks to when I used to listen to folk most of the time (Jon Boden, Seth Lakeman, Kris Drever etc) but really it's only his lyrics that bring that style to mind - he's most certainly in the alt./anti-folk vein. John Vanderslice (also, if this helps, he's collaborated with John Darnielle {who's All Hail West Texas I am still in the process of reviewing for last weeks AOTS}) 

If the last Bright Eyes album had been more like this instead of a watered-down Digital Ash..., I'd have been a very happy girl indeed. Poison Control Center The first track, by the way.


Mollx

SOTW: Kimya Dawson, My Rollercoaster

Kimya Dawson. How she does it I'll never know - My Rollercoaster  is a bit of a jumble. Lyrics as fast and meandering as if she was just making it up off the top of her head, sometimes almost childishly soppy (The life I love is making music with my friends) and still full of quiet beauty. You can imagine her just sitting in your kitchen, laughing, joking, eating a flapjack...and just strumming this song, introducing it with a humble "I just wrote this, it's rough, but I'm really proud of it."  And she ought to be proud. It grabs you, shakes you, puts the biggest smile on your face, and has you humming it for the next three days.

8/10

Mollx

Late Label Day: Cooking Vinyl

I  have often said that Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love is one of the best songs ever. And together with this song, I'm pretty sure they also should have the title of  "Most Epic Band".  Buzzcocks, Fast Cars

I listen to the radio, but I respect his views. The Vines, Don't Listen To the Radio

Well well well. This band've been on The LIST  for a few months now...and who'd'a guessed it? They're good! The Wedding Present, I'm From Further North Than You

Mollx

(Hair-brained) Music Monday

I dyed my hair purple today. And I think I did it just so I had an excuse to post this song. Can you guess which one I'm talking about? ("I really don't care, did you see the drummer's hair?") Pavement, Cut Your Hair

This is just under six years old. Doesn't sound it, does it? Devendra Banhart, Long Haired Child

...And I miss your ginger hair...The Zutons, Valerie

Mollx

AOTS: Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I Am Dreaming

Most of the time, an album focuses on one or two things. Lyrics, maybe, or the fact that you've got a great guitar player, even, perhaps, that you bought a new distortion pedal last week and are desperate to show it off. Shut Up I Am Dreaming focuses on none of these things. Or at least, not just those things. Like in Spencer Krug's day job Wolf Parade, everything is thrown at your ears all at once. And boy do I mean everything. In Wolf Parade, you get the feeling that at least one person in that band knew the meaning of the word restraint. No such word appears in the dictionary of Sunset Rubdown. Krug, however, has a fantastic ear for melody, for contrast, and for making songs that on paper sound shambolic and clumsy sound perfectly centered between what-the hell-am-I-doing-now and military precision. The band pulls back when they need to, like on The Empty Threats Of Little Lord, and goes full throttle on others - Snakes Got A Leg III, for instance. Krug's lyrics are pretty much genius: "And I'm sorry that your mother died / But that one wasn't my fault." from opener Stadiums And Shrines II, or  "I've heard of creatures who eat their babies / And I wonder if they stop to think about the taste." from the stand-out track Us Ones In Between. They're a band that transcends genre boundaries and throws conformity out of the window along with most of their sanity. It works for them though, this crazy, hard to swallow collage of sound. Of course it works. Maybe it's too much at first, maybe the best way to take it is to listen to the tracks separately. But listen to it, please. It's beautiful, fascinating, confusing, and very possibly one of the best albums of the last ten years.

10/10

(and here's the album on streaming site We7)

SOTW: Charlie Simpson, Down Down Down

I have one problem with commercial singer-songwriters: the very fact that they're commercial. It's a fine line sometimes, between commercial-with-merit and popular-indie - which is, say, the line between Charlie Simpson and Marcus Mumford. I'm going to say it right out - Down Down Down is an ok song. It has an acoustic guitar or two, strings, et al, and the man himself has a decent voice if that's your kind of thing. The most glaring thing about it, however, is that it's a song without substance. It's a tune, a group of musicians, in dire need of a good lyric. Case in point: "And the nights are so long without you / And the days speed up." Seriously, Charles. I mean, seriously. Much like his first outing as "the one from Busted with the terrifying eyebrows" (he's still got those, by the way), it's a diluted copy of a decent genre - first doing brain-numbing pop-punk, and now only-slightly-less-brain-numbing pseudo-folk. But it's ok! It does what it says on the tin. It's radio-friendly folk pop, and that's all. It won't change the world. Hell, it's not even trying to. 


But can someone please tell me what the deal is with that weird tempo change? 


3/10


Mollx

Foreign Friday: Ukraine

The second instalment of FF comes from the Ukraine, which accounts for sixty-four of my blog hits (ie forth highest country)

I'm loving this. Am I insulting anyone if I call this harmonic industrial metal? I hope not, they don't sound like the kind of people you want to get on the wrong side of. Komu Vnyz, Shiva

Something totally different now - ethereal folk music, flutes, the whole shebang. T'are good. Fleur, Remont

I always look in the "Metal" section of HMV now. I don't know quite why - they don't stock very much music I like generally, so why should they stock a good range of metal? To be honest I think it's just the first step on my way to coming out of the metalhead closet. Drudkh, Distant Cries Of Cranes

Mollx