There Goes The Fear’s BLOG OFF!? at Roundhouse

There Goes The Fear is one of the UK’s best independent music blogs and a fine source of new-band inspiration.  And now the kindly coolsters are curating BLOG OFF!? this Saturday (20 March) in the Roundhouse studios.  Three hotly-tipped bands and a nice mixture of styles are promised: the chilled-out electro-musings of Victoria & Jacob, Jazica’s jaunty, synth-sponsored indie pop, and the techno-meets-strings sounds of Starlings.  More acts are also due to be announced.

Doubtless they’ll all be huge and popular quicker than you can say ‘Delphic’; when that happens, make sure to say “Ohhh, I saw them, like, ages ago”, flash your cool face and be the very definition of smug superiority.  Or is it only SOIWT which does that?

Tickets are a fiver in advance, or £6 on the door.

Donaeo’s Riot Music

SOIWT knows about as much about club soul as it does Finnish achilles specialists: a little more every day, but really, the square root of sod all divided by bugger nothing.  Nevertheless, such rock-focused ignorance hasn’t stopped your feckless blogger from stumbling on the latest belter from London MC and producer Donaeo.  Riot Music has a hint of reggae about it, and a nice finger-jabbing intensity.  The Shy FX mix attached is excellent, but it’s worth checking out Skream!’s more ripped-up take, too.

MySpace | Buy
MP3: Donaeo – Riot Music (Shy FX remix)

Monday Music – 15 March 2010

Complete with a new, de-cheesified name, here’s the weekly collection of five songs that’ve made me happy in the past seven days:

Cults – Go Outside
Cults started making blogwaves last week after posting three songs on their Bandcamp page.  DI Pitchfork duly investigated, and found out they were a boy-girl NYC duo.  They might not have a MySpace page, but the pair sure can make a great tune.  Go Outside combines a glockenspiel jingle that sounds like one of those tacky musical Christmas cards, hippy-sounding female vocals, a sample of cult leader Jim Jones speaking, a tropical feel and lyrics advocating the benefits of the great outdoors, and fuses them together into a euphoric pop classic.  Re. benefits of great outdoors: in these increasingly temperate times, SOIWT couldn’t agree more.

Kisses – Bermuda
Continuing the meteorological (so had to spell-check that) theme, a week ago this alt-disco anthem would have been far too cheery and full-throttle for the famously unprecedented Famouse Ice Agge suffered by Englande in 2009-10.  But now that balmier climes have returned, daffodils are dancing in the morning breeze, cheeks are de-rouged and sneezes are again invisible, LA-based Kisses‘ Bermuda is timely.  Jesse Kivel’s (he of the much slower Princeton) rich brogue perfectly complements synthtastic disco loops and measured guitars to create a toe-tapper whose disposition is easily as sunny as the island after which it’s named.  More meteorology, note.  

MGMT – Flash Delirium
Once upon a time there was a duo called MGMT.  They made an insanely danceable electro-pop, were the darlings of blogs everywhere and paved the synth highway for thousands of impersonators.  They then disappeared, before magically reappearing on the curiously-slanted Bestival main stage in 2009. There they played a few new songs which sounded consideradly broodier and more substantial.  And now the two heroes are back with second-album-first-single Flash Delirium.  It’s trippy, multi-sectioned, chaotic and, depending on your take, awful or brilliant.  Ever down with the (in-joke alert) Kids, SOIWT says gives it two thumbs up. 

The Chord And The Fawn – Love, Sex, And Rock & Roll
SOIWT thought songs this classy-sounding disappeared with Billie Holiday.  An elegant lullaby from Minneapolis duo The Chord And The Fawn, Love, Sex, And Rock & Roll has a jazz vibe, has tapping drums, has pleasingly forlorn woodwind and has the thistliest ukelele, and yet has but one reason for it’s fabulousness and one alone: Dani Lewis‘ diamond-clear voice.  As she tells the story of an abdicated lover via bouncy rhyming couplets, you feel the simultaneous urge to cry and inelegantly play backing vocalist at every thrilling crest. 

Dengue Fever – Sober Driver
Last week’s top 5 sucked up to the sultry jazz stylings of Morningbell, and this week’s musical slut is similarly smitten with LA’s Dengue Fever.  Sober Driver features clips from what sounds faintly like a Blaxploitation movie but probably isn’t, a rubbery guitar clearly up to skullduggery, and boy-girl vocals in the sense that a soft porn-sounding sexpot occasionally lets a abashed male sing too.  Just when you think things can’t possibly get better, a saxophone starts playing.  Stay tuned for more jizz by neo-jazz next week…

MP3s available to download via the song titles.

Smoke Fairies

Do you have some memories you keep locked in a box in your brain, only dwelling on them in soft, damp-eyed moments of vulnerability?  The music of Smoke Fairies - aka the London duo of Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire – is imbued with that same spirituality and raw intensity: theirs are aching, beautiful tunes that threaten to explode like fireworks such is the passion in them.  The genre is a sort of gospel, folky blues, best listened to in a dimly-lit chamber rich with incense and red wine.  Celtic influences add to the atmosphere, and the music gradually becomes a swirling river to float away on, a hypnotic dream the colour of seaweed or dewy grass.  No wonder Jack White’s a fan.

Smoke Fairies are playing the Camden Crawl this year if you fancy checking them out live, and reckon you can keep it all together…

MySpace | Website | Buy
MP3: Smoke Fairies – Now The Green Blade Rises

The Heartbreaks come to London

Manchester fourpiece The Heartbreaks are playing a couple of London shows as March turns to April, giving SOIWT all the excuse to need to flag them up.  They play atmospheric, pretty rock-pop songs that encourage eye-closing and giddy feelings.  Each one’s fast, but never overly intense or complicated; the most notable touch is Matthew’s expressive vocals, capable of both flinty chattiness and broad chorus sweeps.  Quirky hooks here and there add to the mix, and there’s a general euphoria and singalonability (dictionary it, Collins) that’s mightily appealing and a little bit classic.

Those aforementioned gigs are an in-store at Pure Groove on Weds 31 March, promoting single Liar, My Dear (video above) and a headline show at Barfly on Fri 2 April (tickets).

MySpace | Buy
MP3: The Heartbreaks – Elegy-on-Sea  (very kindly provided by the band)

Victoria & Jacob

You know that interlude between being asleep and waking up?  If an alarm clock has its way this fuzzy period lasts only a few seconds, but otherwise it can stretch for minutes – a bleary, confused and cosy episode where you try and cling to your dreams.  And here’s the perfect soundtrack for those slow mornings: Victoria & Jacob‘s blissful chill-out pop, combining electronic ripples and synthetic samples with earnest female vocals and a general bubble-bath atmosphere that makes everything a little easier.  First Aid Kit, Imogen Heap, Lykke Li and Joanna Newsom are  all echoed, but Victoria & Jacob went down an altogether trippier rabbit hole.

The London duo’s single With Certainty is due on 5 April via Voga Parochia - and the B-side is available below.  Forthcoming gigs include The Flowerpot on Weds 17 March, There Goes The Fear‘s Blog Off night (more on this soon) at Roundhouse on Sat 20 March and a Pure Groove lunchtime in-store on Tues 6 April.  Also worth checking out an interview on The Devil Has The Best Tuna – find out how Victoria’s previous singing style got her compared to Kate Nash. (Disclaimer: SOIWT like, totally hates Kate Nash)

MySpace | Website | Buy
MP3: Victoria & Jacob – There’s A War

The Do or Dies

When you look at it from afar, life’s a blurry series of disparate moments, random paces, ups and downs, drama after drama, with the occasional moment of peace, of blessed content.  The Do or Dies‘ Maps & Plans is much like that: it’s various sections eventually leading to a blissful, dreamy crest, but they only last so long.  Other songs by this emerging London quartet are just as enticing: Blast’s a ferris wheel of a tune, its rapid-fire vocals culminating in soaring highs, while Fools feels like a honeyed tragedy, like that sensation of crying at sad scenes in a film but having a good time doing it.  In fact, on record at least, every Do or Dies track has the same slightly euphoric, saturated quality: one that encourages to you to close your eyes, sway your head and…

The above suggests that, live, they’re a lot rowdier.  You can find out tomorrow night - The Do or Dies are once again playing Water Rats in support of Pickpockets & Skyrockets, with tickets here.

MySpace | Website

Yuck – Georgia

What is it with beguiling, surname-less women and besotted upcoming London bands?  First Al Cool & The Stranger Wines perved on lost love Celine, and now here’s Yuck (with members from Hiroshima and New Jersey as well as London) trying to empathise with a lady called Georgia.  They do so via a slice of bouncy punk that’s like a giddy wave of euphoria you know is only temporary, like a sneeze that you just can’t suppress, like a skip down a street.  The guitar sections are slightly 1990s rock (think Mr. Big) and the structure simple, but there’s a pleasingly blurry aspect, and some nicely distorted and slightly nostalgic boy-girl vocals.   A tour with Japandroids will apparently follow in May.

Thanks to Platform for alerting SOIWT to this – via its excellent new Jookbox music-blog round-up.

MySpace | Blog | Buy (from 15 March on Transparent)
MP3: Yuck – Georgia

Proud’s Save 6 Music night

While desperately sad at the imminent closure of BBC 6 Music (everyone seems to be handling BBC Asian’s demise much better) – and the absence of a Sunday night spent listening to weird and wonderful Mexican flute rock or Japanese tango, of a radio station daring enough to play daring new music, and of non-cringeworthy live sets –  SOIWT is a little over email petitions collecting signatures.

Praise be for Proud, then.  The Camden stables venue has organised an impromptu ‘Save 6 Music’ night tomorrow (Wednesday), with live performances from the excellent Kitty, Daisy & Lewis and hip hopper Master Shortie.  The bad news is that Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong will be there, but happily they’ll only be DJing, not making noxious racket as normal.  The Maccabees, The Holloways and Ali Love will also take up deck duties, with more acts apparently to be announced.  Rather than get names on paper, the evening pledges to raise awareness about the plight of “the most iconic radio station of our time”.  You might argue that anyone who’d heard about the event would surely already be aware by default, but they probably mean in the bigger sense…

The Save 6 Music Facebook group has above 150,000 members now; it’s being run by modern culture’s cheerleaders-in-chief, Jon and Tracy Morter – they of last Christmas’ campaign to get Rage Against The Machine in the No. 1 spot.  Mr Morter is clearly letting the fame get to him, though, as he’s also among tomorrow’s disk-jockeys.  Meanwhile, poor Auntie’s received around 8,000 letters of outrage.  People power is so clearly hip right now, but will Mark Thompson give a Beeb?  Let’s hope so.

Proud says tickets will go fast, which probably means they won’t.  But it’s worth booking now just in case.  Try here.  They total £5.50 and all profit goes to Shelter, the heroic homeless charity.

Did Lovebox get cool?

That’s the question on the chapped lips of Londoners at the moment, and it’s so urgent an issue than SOIWT is going to address it right bloody now.

Y’see, once upon a time Lovebox was a Victoria Park festival one relied on for chart-friendly dance music (Mylo), middling indie bands whose better days had long passed (Super Furry Animals), and ageing soul legends with just one, achingly annoying hit-song (Candi Staton).   While the musicians were present were generally good – not least founders and every-yearers Groove Armada – none were especially controversial or, well, interesting. 

And the crowd?  Like, please.  This was the London festival when everyone got to pretend they were down with the East London kids: cue an invasion of “Vicky Park” by the sandals-and-sunnies brigade, glass of wine in hand, handbag on arm, and Sunday Times being obediently lugged by t-shirted boyf.  These were the ominous portents of Shoreditch’s subsequent westernisation, a troop of boutiquey bores who heralded the boom in bottled ciders and exulted in a weekend ’festival’ where you didn’t have to camp, or anything unnatural like that. 

But last year, the times, as Bob Dylan sort of said, were a-changing.  The line-up assumed an air of daring: N.E.R.D., Diplo, Gang of Four, Noah & The Whale (hardly barnstorming danceness), Nextmen, Fenech Soler… Even Florence & The Machine was vaguely unknown when the names were first broadcast, if you can remember those empty pre-Flo days.  Holy Smoky Robinson and the Bandits said Batman lovers to each other, this is almost exciting. 

And what of this year?  Well, the line-up’s just out and guess what?  It’s more o’ the same.  Ok, so there’s Grace Jones and Mark Ronson, but shuffle past that and the bill’s eclecticism positively leaps out and ruffles your side parting: Chromeo, Crookers, Ellie Goulding, Empire of the Sun, Hurts, Joy Orbison and Wild Beasts, to name a few.  None of these are as unlikely as, say, Afrikan Boy, would be, but still there is a notably cool, undiscovered kinda vibe going on, one more in keeping with the traditional East London ethos.  (SOIWT also applauds the appearance of the coolest ‘old band’ around, Roxy Music, pretty much guaranteeing a rendition of Shameless, the new Groove Armada track featuring Bryan Ferry.)

So did Lovebox get cool?  Maybe not quite yet – but definitely cooler.  It’s trendier, too – these days its hepcats feature in the pages of Vogue, bedecked in a charity shop, ethnic-style garb with a firm boho vibe.  It’ll never be a down-and-dirty do without the overnight element, but there’s a more than a little untidiness to be found at today’s Lovebox.  And untidiness is good.

Tickets here if you’re not too daunted.

MP3: Groove Armada – Shameless (Feat. Bryan Ferry)