Fool’s Gold – tropical, topical rock

As recently revealed on the brilliant Nialler9 blog, LA-based eight-piece (plus several percussionists) Fool’s Gold are the latest addition to the IAmSound roster.  This is a fab label that’s seeing some mega success this year, with Florence and the Machine and Little Boots selling shedloads of records, and edgier acts like Telepathe, cockandbullkid and Suckers gaining a devoted underground following. As for Fool’s Gold, they appear common to two recent musical themes: they’re a motley collection of musicians from successful existing bands (We Are Scientists, Glasser, Foreign Born and The Fall), and they’re peddling an African-influenced, tropical sound.  Initially, the former factor makes me worry how long they’ll be around; and the latter seems a bit of trendy cliché (it’s, like, so cool to sound African, darling)… but both of these become pifflingly minor concerns once I hear this band’s stuff..

At the moment Fool’s Gold’s MySpace page has two songs available: Surprise Hotel is a sweet, prolonged jam comprising an extended chirpy intro, Calypso-style pronouncements, careering guitar prangs around one sweet, summer’s dream of a chord, and some giddy group vocal harmonies, with lyrics so gloriously mumbly they’re less words than mere sound groups that you sing along to in an ad-lib way – “me capa na haaaa, laaaaaa diii ahaaaaa” while lolling your head delightedly. So fresh and lively does Surprise Hotel feel, you wonder if it’s being made up on the spot, just for you. I scarcely dare imagine how good it sounds live, although the videos on the MySpace page give some idea.  As for the other track, Nadine (not a Chuck Berry cover), it’s more brass-based and grandiose, but just as incorrigible in a get-out-of-that-seat-and-onto-the-dancefloor-NOW kinda way, especially via rather naughty saxophone licks, and similarly reeking of Latin Jazz loveliness.

Best of all (arguably), Fool’s Gold’s debut is out on September 29, i.e. my birthday!  So if anyone’s stuck on what to buy me… well, you know…

Fool’s Gold on MySpace

MP3:
Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel (zSHARE)

Oasis drea-mixed by Devendra Banhart

I’m just dashing out so no time to say much other than you haven’t heard Oasis like this before.  Devendra Banhart’s reworking is a woozy, slightly surreal and rather glorious interpretation – so much so that I’m calling it a drea-mix. OOOH, new term, new term!!!  I’ll copyright that one baby, thanks very much. 

I wish all remixes did this – presented a new vision, took the song in a new direction and re-constructed it.  Most are incredibly unimaginative, I tend to think  -for example, Chase & Status’ remix of Death by White Lies is just the song with some staggers and big stringy beats that rather jar with the original record.  Dear me.  Happy weekend everyone

MP3:
Oasis – Get Off Your High Horse Lady (Devendra Banhart remix) (zSHARE)

New London Music – GCSE Music

I aim to regularly blog about emerging London-based musical talent, so much is there waiting to be discovered.  There’s also a lot of dross, too, so think of me as your tour guide is this world of red herrings and plain gone-off herrings, prodding you in the direction of lurking pearls.  That truly terrible watery analogy out of the way, let’s move on to my first-ever recommendation:

GCSE Music
Their MySpace page is so spectacularly devoid of band information, and a Google search so incredibly useless (think EdExcel’s website and the BBC’s education page), that I’m going to be forced into taking blithely irresponsible guesses about these electro popsters.  From their five songs, I’d say this is two people, one on vocals and both on highly clever keyboards and computer sample programmes, with one possibly playing guitar.  At times.  Other useful facts I can tell you is that they’re from SE London and represented by the same management as cocknbullkid (who I like) and The Feeling (who I don’t).

But what of GCSE Music’s, er, music?  Well, it’s like eating an entire pack of Refreshers while smoking a huge joint and running around in circles with hands out-stretched.  Something like that, anyway; for the main, this is carefully constructed pop, full of samples, big bouncy beats with a dose of disco, and reasonably high-pitched vocals, occasionally interspersed with much more sardonic, grubbier tones.  It all feels slightly boyish – a back-room, spare-time project by geeks who are too sensible to expect success.  They might just get it, though, particularly thanls to TV Music, the most gorgeous electronically-tinged song I’ve heard in many a MySpace sesh, and a neat little paean to televisions to boot.  It’s a delicious dream of a song and easily my current lights-out fave. On and On is much rockier but similarly catchy, with satirical lyrics about the conveyor belt of one-hit wonders, new bandwagon and the general clamour to be de rigeur.

Some of the rest have the capacity to annoy me over time, but that’s a minor criticism as I’m easily bored.  There’s real potential here (said in Simon Cowell voice) and I’m excited to hear more songs.  If any live dates are announced, I’ll break the news here quicksmart!

myspace.com/gcsemusic

MP3:
GCSE Music – I Love TV (zSHARE)

Stephen Konrads and PEPPER RABBIT – recommended by Passion Pit

Musical recommendations are always a risky business. One man’s Pearl Jam is liable to be another chap’s Dave Matthews Band, or still worse.  It seems to me that music triggers a strongly personal chemical reaction in each of us – certain sounds, beats, chords, voices, instruments or whatever might be manna to heaven from me, yet inexorably insignificant to a friend of mine – even though we both like Solid Gold, or Jack Penate, or Dire Straits.

One thing I have found is that tip-offs from acts I like about acts they like rarely seem to end well.  Perhaps it’s because subconsciously I expect to like said tip-off, because I love the act that recommended them and so why wouldn’t I?  In fact, expecting to like something hardly ever leads to the anticipated adulation.  Or perhaps it’s because acts are bored of their own sound, so they recommend something different, but I really like their sound, and actually I don’t like this different thing.  Bastards – how dare they do something different??? 

Whatever the reason, here’s one that’s bucked the trend for me at least.   In an interview just published on Dazed, Passion Pit – a band I, being a cool blogger de rigeur, fricking adore (despite the fact that tonight they’re playing at Vibe Bar and I can’t go because my friend, who’ll remain nameless, but let’s call her Susan for the sake of it, took too long deciding if she could come and so OF COURSE it sold out.  Anyway I’m fine with it and not bitter) – recommended three less-known acts that they follow.  Because I already know and love one of them, Magic Magic, I gave the other two a whirl.  And boy are they fantastic:

Stephen Konrads
Still shy of a 1000 friends on MySpace, Konrads is evidently very much an unknown quantity.  It’s not likely to stay that way for long, judging by the songs on his page.  On offer is a darker, more considered rock than Massachusetts neighbours Passion Pit, although equally catchy, complete with Stephen’s Nick Cave-esque, laconic voice.  I like how House of the Lord more or less completely stops in the middle, as if for half-time oranges, before returning to its previous bouncy rhythm and raucous, straggly vocals, only to then slow down again into a gentle electro reverie.  “Don’t tell me what to do”, it seems to say, “because dammit I’ll do the opposite”. And that’s fine by me.   Staging Actors is a simpler ditty, but framed around a natty little keyboard beat.  It’s jigalicious stuff and I can’t wait to hear more.  myspace.com/stephenkonrads

MP3:
Stephen Konrads – House of the Lord (zSHARE)

PEPPER RABBIT
Much murkier and more grandiose sound-wise, California duo PR have a few more fans and more songs to get stuck into.  General themes are piercing and occasionally high-pitched vocals, gorgeous cameos from fancy instruments like harps (I think) and trumpets, interludes of pure tripped-down electronica, occasional background choruses, and a dreamy, sprawling feel to their gorgeous tunes – very slightly reminiscent of Yeasayer in that last quality. Red Wine tells a pretty torturous tale and yet is the musical equivalent of rolling in a huge pile of silk sheets; None Shall Sleep is gritty and sombre, but framed with a tender, bubbling string backing; while In The Spirit of Beauregard feels like a vaudeville piano song from a musical scored by Yes.  Most impressive of all, there’s not one weak song among the eight on offer.  myspace.com/pepperrabbit

MP3:
PEPPER RABBIT – Red Wine  (zSHARE) (M4A)

Will you like my own musical tips?  Let’s hope so!

New Bands To See Live In London

Some news of exciting bands playing these shores:

YACHT
YACHT is a two-piece from Portland, Oregon; they’re quite well-followed in the States but we island-dwellers seem more resistant to their charms.  For a duo they make a relentless racket but baby is it catchy: big disco sounds over a sultry hip-hop beat, maddeningly and irritatingly seductive chants in voices so fabulously ratcheted that pubescence must never be allowed, inventive noises (huh, ooh, wha, etc.), minimal instrumental sections on what sounds like a xylophone, and obscure and strangely delicate keyboard samples. And that’s just new single Psychic City.  In fact their other efforts are slower and calmer: all in all this is a mish-mash of weirdly, wordly sounds, and the sort of revolting musical amalgamation, perhaps even abomination, that generally sinks but, on this happy occasion, floats.. like a yacht!!  HAHA ha ha?  You dig?  Hmm.

For real (funny) comedy, read the band’s marvellously silly MySpace mission statement: myspace.com/yacht.   The live date below follows a May tour supporting Patrick Wolf, and sees them pushing their new album ‘See Mystery Lights’.  There are also dates in Brighton and Manchester, plus the seriously-fun-sounding Truck Festival in Steventon.

Live date:
Fri 24 July – Cargo

MP3:
YACHT – Psychic City (zSHARE)

Crocodiles
Sometimes, there’s really nothing better than some teeth-knashing, sofa-bashing guitar actions, the type forcing the type of intense glazed headthrusts and floaty eyes that give today’s youth a bad name.  Being swept along by a guitar-driven epic always feels to me like being carried in rapids, fast and rhythmic, you powerless and captive, yet in this instance that’s amazing and the’s danger an irrelevance.  That’s the sort of sound Crocodiles make: raw, gritty rock, with echoey, razor sharp vocals thanks to some sort of reverberator gadget, and epic instrumental sections culminating in sudden meltdowns.  It’s music for dimly-lit, smoky, reflective rooms, shoegaze on several slugs of Red Bull.

There’s precious little information about the band, but plenty of songs, at myspace.com/crocodilescrocodilescrocodiles

Live date:
Tues 4 August – Barden’s Boudoir

MP3:
Crocodiles – I Wanna Kill (zSHARE)

Florence and the Obscene

She’s got a voice cased in gold and the raven-haired looks of a Greek temptress.  She leaves it all on stage wherever she performs, and positively defines vintage, charity shop chic.  There’s much to admire in Florence Welch, aka Florence and the Machine, as much as there are things to dislike (having met her, I’m of the opinion she really isn’t the world’s nicest girl).  There’s certainly reasons aplenty for catching her free in-store gig tonight at Rough Trade East, off Brick Lane here in London.

And yet, it turns out the gig isn’t free at all.  Well, not unless you purchase ‘Lungs’, Flo’s debut album, out this week.  Which costs £13.  Which is about £13 more expensive than most free things. Which is, I think, awful. 

In their defence, the record shop would probably stipulate that they never advertised a free show; and that real Florence fans would buy the album anyway.  All total nonsense – every other Rough Trade show is free, and what happened to going to an in-store gig to scout out a new act, someone you might like?  Shame on you Rough Trade.

Free Atmosphere EP!

Fresh from a recent show at their seemingly one-and-only London haunt, the Scala, Minneapolis hip-hop duo Atmosphere are back home putting the final licks and kisses on the next album.  But before that, in a bid to whet appetites and stir fevers (and to hype the band’s new digital online store), they’ve made a seven-track EP freely available.  Perhaps with a nod to these days of musical piracy and illegal internet distribution, it’s called ‘Leak At Will’, and in Atmosphere’s words “was a lot of fun to make. nothing too serious, just smiles and cries. Consider it another “thank you” for all of the support you have offered us over the years.”

It’s good stuff – nothing too lengthy or complex but full of those savvy, adept observations and neatly mundane lyrics that’s the Atmosphere signature, with catchy hooks and/or samples sweeping up behind them. There’s even their own ’Feel-Good Hit Of The Summer’, with a number 2 at the end, just as focused on narcotics as Queens of the Stone Age’s version.  Personally I think Atmosphere sound a bit too gangsta these days – it’s all niggers, coke and fuck X and Y, rather than soulful, insecure laments about hangovers and or analysing the urban strife on show in their home city – such as in F-GHOTS2, where Anthony says of drug use: ”Stay away from me if your life’s getting stupid / And please stop pretending it makes better music”.  In general though, these are still nice, decent tunes and really, who’s complaining if it’s free?! 

To download ‘Leak At Will’, you need to go to said online store – www.fifthelementonline.com - find the EP (currently featured on the landing page) and add it to your cart.  From there, go to check-out and then you’ll need to register an account.  The ‘State/Province’ box reverts to manual entry if you select a country other than the USA below.  And you can click ‘no payment details needed’ when it asks for credit card numbers, and not have to enter any such info - a relief for all us fraud-fearers out there, even though I’m sure Atmo’s site is perfectly safe.  It comes down in zip file format too, so beware of that.  Enjoy!

Summer In The City – A Soundtrack

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, London’s absolutely baking at the moment.  We’re in the grip of an intense heatwave, the type of hot spell us Britons spend months and months idolising and yearning for, then quickly despair of and detest once it arrives.  Well, most seem to do so.  Personally I love the hot blue brutality of it all: the certainty of one intensely sultry day following another, and that glorious, stultifying laziness that comes with staggering heat. It’s impossible and pointless to do much more than the bare minimum here.  A little bit of work, a lot of fluid and plenty of sun-soaking – that’s pretty much the order of the day.  It’s a time of barbecues, roof terraces, Pimms, tragic shorts-and-socks combos, boons in Frappucino sales, hosepipe bans, burnt grass, picnics, naughtiness on Hampstead Heath at dusk, sun lotion, festivals, fetes and ice cream vans.  What’s not to like?

These broiling dog days have their own soundtrack, I think; or rather, certain songs instantly come to mind and ear when the temperatures sore so.  Here are five of my favourite classics – and tw0 lesser-knowners:

Lovin’ Spoonful – Summer In The City
It had to be in there right?  John Sebastian’s throaty, chili-sponsored voice is the perfect summer drug, taking us through a fast-paced summary of all the best bits of urban sweltering (the first half at least).  The song captures the languor and stifling silence of hot days – “all around, people looking half dead / walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head” – and the thrill of an evening out afterwards – “but at night it’s a different world / go out and find a girl”.  The best bit’s in the middle, though.  After the first chorus winds down, some old cars honk their horns, and then, ever so gently, a piano starts tinkling and we’re off again.  It’s the slow, reflective pause everyone needs during these warm times.

Don Henley – The Boys of Summer
This is shaping up to be a fairly obvious list, but never mind that.  Making a manly effort to ignore the ruinous DJ Sammy cover version, it strikes me while listening to Henley’s famous hit that here is a tune only ever played in hot climes.  It’s all about driving, man – wayfarers on, the open road stretching endlessly ahead with gleaming possibility (“a voice inside my head saying never look back / you can never look back”), and the way women look so good in sunlight – “and i can see you / your brown skin shining in the sun”.  Most of all though, Henley’s song is all about nostalgia: remembering that perfect summer, much like Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69 and Endless Summer Nights by Richard Marx, and wishing it would come again: “those days are gone for ever / i should just let them go and…”.  Seize the moment kids, or you’ll be all regretful like poor Don.

Manu Chao – Mr Bobby (Live)
Most of Manu Chao’s songs are pointedly political, but they also work on a real joie de vivre level, those groovy Latin beats cajoling you into twirling head and hips.  Here’s one that pure fun, though: Manu’s tribute to Bob Marley, and desperate plea for to the dreadlocked legend for inspiration.  Heard live it’s pure heaven – slow, luxuriant and blissful. Peeling keyboard songs, choral trumpets and the occasional Latin newsreader recordings are all that interrupt Manu’s exulted crowing of “heyyyy, it’s gonna be alriiiiiight / everything, I sayyyyyyyyyy, it’s it’s gonna be alriiiiiight”. A delicious, delicate summery swoon of a song, one irresistible not to join in with.

MGMT – Time To Pretend
A year on and a burst of covers and remixes later, MGMT’s batch of hit songs haven’t lost their stunningly fresh feel for all the consequent familiarity.  Time was last year when this song was on everyone’s lips, every scenester’s iPod, every blog’s must-listen list and even the ultimate badge of cool.  It’s instantly recognisable and synonymous with good times thanks to its chirpy, infectious electric guitar intro, used to its best effect in the opening credits of 21, as the camera sweeps down over Boston’s Charles River, onto hero Ben as he cycles over the Mass Ave. Bridge.  “Do-d-do-do-do-do-dah… I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life”.  Shamefully 21 neglects to include the song’s concluding peak, as singer Andrew shrills “I said a-yeah yeah yeahhhhh…”  God yeah.

Finley Quaye – Even After All
Finley came, briefly conquered, then disappeared into a career of playing Croydon and Wolverhampton rather than Cardiff or Wembley.  But his brief stint of acclaim contained this slice of heaven, one of the most chilled-out pieces of music ever recorded.  Much of it is purely lazy plucks of a guitar, interrupted by Finley’s Sunday-morning-coffee voice. It’s a song to slowly stroll along with, to toast with a glass of rosé, or swirl to around to beside a bandstand.  I personally adore the middle instrumental section: the guitar plays exotic, seductive notes subtly louder, a drum beats faintly in the background and for a moment every single thing’s destined to be just fine. 

And the two lesser-known ones are:

DJ Skitz – Inner City Folk (Feat. Roots Manuva)
All Roots Manuva songs sound summery and smooth to me, not least Dreamy Days, but this trumps them all if only for the seriously funny, cute lyrics: “I’d be a liar if I said I weren’t affected / Picnic opportunities just cannot be neglected / I’m sitting outside seasoning the chicken / I aint licking my fingers cos it’s unhygenic / We go out to the country where it’s clean and scenic / My face is getting blacker and my belly’s getting fatter.”  Genius. Then there’s the delicious sample cover, as a gorgeous female soul voice purrs “In the heat of the summer”.  Hip hop doesn’t get any smoother.

Fleet Foxes – In The Hot, Hot Rays
One of the Foxes’ less-known lullabies, this is a blissful paean to long, scorching afternoons, painting a picture of steaming sidewalks and exhausted canines: “Heat, like a dead weight / Still coverin’ the street outside / So heavy that the dogs can’t hide”.  I’ve no idea what it’s about – there are hints of gap years, departing lovers and tramps – but I defy anyone not to close their eyes and be swept along by the high guitar whirrs, or by the soporific, gorgeous verse beats.  I like the chorus less, and it’s over much too quickly – like any British heatwave – but it’s a perfect slice of musical summer pie.

NB: The Strangler’s Always The Sun is delectable, with its mmms, but I somehow don’t find it that relaxing, even with the slow, soft beat.  And I’ve ignored Summer Lovin’ from Grease on general principle. 

MP3s:
DJ Skitz – Inner City Folk (Feat. Roots Manuva)
Fleet Foxes – In The Hot, Hot Rays
Manu Chao – Mr Bobby (Live)
MGMT – Time To Pretend

Purchase Links
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (album)
MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (album)

Who’s The Boss At Glastonbury?

I’ve just been watching Bruce Springsteen’s set at Glastonbury.  I’m an average Boss fan: like any music lover I know the main songs – Born to Run, Dancing in the Dark – plus a few other, lesser-knowns – Promised Land, for instance.  But I don’t know his back catalogue so well, and I sat down to watch the BBC’s coverage of his set expecting to like those songs I knew, uncertain about the rest.

How wrong I was.  The BBC showed the last hour or so of Bruce’s set and… lord, I’m lost for words.  It was so, surreally, stupidly, absurdly, majestically brilliant.  Just pure heaven.  Every song more immense, more breathtaking than the last, and the crowd in some sort of orgiastic, demented ecstatic fervour throughout, greedily milking it in. Pianos were tinkling, guitars rampaging, saxophones peeling and Springsteen was constantly standing on the front-row barrier, guitar high above his chest, roaring out the lyrics in his manly growl, sweat piling down his forehead and stained blue shirt, his eyes rapt in delirium, head bouncing, mighty legs thrust wide and oak-carved arms thrashing at his strings, his every sinew and motion demanding more, more, fucking still more more more more from his besotted crowd, they falling slightly more in love with him with each tearful second and gleeful song.

The sweat’s indicative of a vital element of Springsteen shows: the fact that he gives absolutely everything he has.  Quite how is beyond imagination – he had a similarly momentous show the next night, at Hyde Park, and you know he wouldn’t have delivered any less of a show – given his age (50-something, I think), and the length of his set (this one 2hrs 40 mins).  Fitness is one thing, but he’s clearly driven by other, bigger forces – a love for his work, a desire to reward his fans as best as he can, and possibly some superhuman powers as yet undiscovered.  Throughout the chunk of the set I saw, Bruce was forever running up and down the stairs to jam with fans in the front rows, careering around rage, scarcely pausing between songs to pack more in, and bellowing to the huge (as huge as there can ever have been at Glastonbury) crowd in the few quiet moments.  This was real rock-and-roll; a real show, with a real showman, and I can’t believe any music fan of any genre would have been completely uninspired watching it.  At the end, during a typically epic rendition of Dancing in the Dark, Springsteen thrust his guitar in circuits around his body to the precise beat, a glazen, paradiscal look hewn on his kind face.  It was as if there was nothing he couldn’t do.

He talked amid one song of the E Street Band building a house of joy with their music, and that’s precisely the sound they made.  Songs like Outlaw Pete deliver it via shrill, moving choruses, and anthems like Born To Run through vast, singalong zeniths, ones during which it’s nearly impossible not to thrust fingers or arms in the air at every peak. Perhaps the most joyous moments of all come in the giddy refrains of Springsteen’s cheeriest songs – Waitin’ On A Sunny Day (a pulsating, triumphant messaging written in reaction to 9/11), Glory Days, 10th Avenue Freeze Out – when the band, licked into total harmony after so many shows down the years, just play, saxophones, guitars, harmonicas, accordions and more making the most terrific, uplifting, thrilling noises, different every time but all equally magnificent.  Watching it I was constantly close to tears; not in a sad way (although I am devastated I wasn’t there), but because of the power of song, the ability of some music to strip everything bare and pare away a listener to his/her basest emotions and purest reactions.  Listening to Springsteen’s music felt like walking into a rainbow, meeting a deceased relative or the onset of world peace: in short it made me feel free, and keenly aware that anything was possible.

Afterwards, Jo and Mark on the BBC revealed that the band decide their first two songs before going on stage, then ad-lib the rest having gauged the crowd’s move.  They all know all the songs by heart, so it’s a purely interactive, interpretive experience, and likely never the same.  That makes it still worse that I’ve missed this one, but provides still more reason to go and see future shows.  And by God I will now.

Here’s a little taster of the live Springsteen experience:

MP3:
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Waitin’ On A Sunny Day (Live) (zSHARE)

YouTube:
Bruce Springsteen Live (search)
Bruce Springsteen – Dancing In The Dark (Live at Glastonbury 2009)

Purchase Links:
Bruce Springsteen – Greatest Hits (album)
Bruce Springsteen MP3s