Friday Films
Here’s the long-awaited (by me) return of Friday Films, the post where I hype videos by London bands I like. Since I haven’t done this for about 56 weeks, it’s going to be a behemoth:
Psychologist – Comes In Waves
Predictably mellow video for typically mellow Psychologist beaut.
Treetop Flyers – Things Will Change
A pleasingly spartan, acoustic version of the recent single by West London’s folkish favourites.
Daughter – Run (Live)
I admit to being rather underwhelmed by Daughter for a while. But her voice is velvet smooth and extremely alluring, and Run in particular has me hooked. Here’s a sweet live version.
Charli XCX – Stay Away (Salem‘s Angel Remix)
I can’t describe this any better than Dummy: ‘Salem turn up the epic, transforming Charli XCX’s track into a breathing force on this bracing remix that will make you say “Wow”.’
Cosmo Jarvis – Sure As Hell Not Jesus
More camp japes and joyous jigs in another cracking tune from Cosmo.
John Maus – Believer
It’s been a long while since I featured the maudlin, burly tones of former Ariel Pinker John Maus. This one’s a definite grower.
Chapel Club – Blind
Chapel Club appear to have grown a bit more thoughtful than when I last checked in. Does that mean radio-friendly? Does that mean soft rock? Not sure. See what you think. I sure like the video.
Fantasy?
We lie wrapped around each other in the dark bedroom, hearts as intertwined as legs. “I like you,” I say gently, suddenly overwhelmed with how much I do, with how her presence lights my life, with how I’m happy. The post-sex sheen of sweat on her forehead glistens as she smiles in response. She whispers back: “I really like you”, moving her head to make eye contact for extra emphasis. I stroke her hair. We burrow ever deeper into each other.
Two weeks later I’m dumped and it’s as if it all never happened.
I feel stupid, discarded. I feel as though there’s a hole in my stomach, and sometimes I’m so convinced there is that I have to grope around just to check. I wish she’d change her mind.
Monday Music – 16 May 2011
So I have been cast adrift by my girlfriend; at her time of need, she has reasoned that she doesn’t need me. It feels horrendous and lonely and stupid. I don’t trust anything now.
Tom Williams & The Boat – Concentrate
I think I’ve got a future, and I think I’m dead if I lose track.
MONEY – Letter To Yesterday
MONEY are a Manchester band with five names. They make spidery, shuddery, abstract shoegaze, an intrusive sound that goes through you like a probe, seeking out any weak spots or areas of sadness, and yielding instant tears and shakes if it lucks out. It’s for rooms which haven’t seen fresh air for days, for bedsits and knives and wrists and wanting to be somewhere else.
The Black Atlantic – Fragile Meadow
This Dutch band – sounding three-quarters Fleet Foxes-esque folk, and 25% hazy flower-power melancholia - is part of a fine and emerging Holland scene, one to which I was alerted by the wonderful Holly M. Gray at Filter in LA, a friend I might never meet. Perhaps this is her in the video.
Planningtorock – Doorway (Creep remix)
If I chose to float away, this would be the carpet on which I’d ride. Creep’s remix may be beautiful and poignant, but it’s also coolly “driven, determined, it’s getting to where it’s going to. You’re not getting in its way; no-one is, not today.
The Bullitts – Close Your Eyes
And now for something completely different. Courtesy of writer, producer and musician Jeymes Samuel, The Bullitts is actually an adventure story told through music. It’s the tale of Amelia Sparks, an ice-cold murderess awaiting execution on death row, with her diary recounting events in real time on Twitter. Lucy Liu plays Amelia, Idris Elba from The Wire is detective Saul Emmanuel, and this first, funky song features Jay Electronica. File under weird/wonderful.
About Group
The sometime band of Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, About Group have now recorded an album, Start & Complete, for Domino, most of it largely ad-libbed over one day in Abbey Road. Organs and guitars pang plaintively, and Taylor’s close-the-curtains vocals soothes sad heads. Here’s Don’t Worry, the first track…
Festival news
A couple of slices of London festival pie:
Firstly, the increasingly revered Revere will headline the returning Fishtank Festival on Brick Lane later this November.
Secondly, Still Corners and Mogwai man Stuart Braithwaite are among the acts at The Local & TLOBF’s also-returning Shhh! Festival in January, once more championing the appeal of quiet, reflective music.
Thank you, goodnight.
Still Corners – Cremona (mp3)
Offset / Last.fm night at the Macbeth
I’ve just stumbled across an ace-sounding night coming up at the Macbeth in November. Arranged by Last.fm and Offset, the Hoxton joint will play host to upcoming London bands Teeth, Fiction, Is Tropical (now signed to Kitsune) and Hounds of Hate, a Dalston electro collective about whom a devoted blog shall soon follow. Club.The.Mammouth are among the DJs and it’ll likely be just a fiver in. In the words of Fiction, let’s see what happens?
Don’t make a sound
I’m losing the girl I love. It feels wretched, and sense-killing, a slowly increasing panic that’s spreading in my head like a bacterial virus I have no control over. It feels like I’ve actually, physically got a hole in my chest. I keep checking to make sure I haven’t. All I want right now are pitch-black bedrooms, nondescript sidestreets, and rain, rain galore, so much rain. I want to hide, and never try again. I want to, but of course I won’t.
Here’s the only possible song, and even a video with cute dogs.
Sunset Rubdown – Shut Up I Am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings (mp3)
Cymbals
A good market starts off quiet with only the odd histrionic, then gets rapidly rowdier during a pretty pattern of honky-tonk, high-pitched voices and maverick elements, then goes consistent, then manic for a final hurrah, then suddenly, stunningly, it’s over. A great song by new London act Cymbals appears to go something like that too.
Their Bandcamp page also has a melancholic Pavement cover for free download. For more, catch them at White Heat on Tues 7 September, not that the website currently admits as much.
I’m standing up now
On the train back from the Edinburgh wedding, I was feeling pretty low for a few reasons. At Newcastle, this old lady, in her 80s I’d say, took the seat next to me. We didn’t say anything or even acknowledge each other for a while, until I went to get a tea and she had to move aside. When I returned she asked me croakily, in a firm Geordie accent, if I was from London. My initial, internal reaction was wtf, why are you talking to me, just shut up! But I am instinctively polite so I replied, and gradually, all-too-slowly, realised it was actually pretty nice talking to this woman.
She told me she was on her way to York for the day; she told me about the free buses in Leeds where I said I’d been at university many moons ago; she confessed she rode the trains a lot using her husband’s old pass, after he died 15 years ago. “He worked on the tracks” she said, with fond, nostalgic pride. I sensed he had been a good guy, and was much missed.
Eventually York station trundled into view. This lady, whose name I never got, stood up. “I’m standing up now,” she said. I nodded, and gulped a little, unexpectedly choked. “It was nice to meet you,” I mustered. It really had been; a brief rise from my otherwise ugly reverie. “Nice to meet you too,” she said, matter-of-factly, before striding off into her life, and out of mine. I sat there, damp-eyed and suddenly, starkly aware of the fragility of things. Then the train pulled out, and I gradually forgot, returning to my slumber.
That encounter stays with me, though. It also shows me how things can grow, and how my own first impressions and gut reactions aren’t always great. This beautiful, rousing song does a little of that, too…
Tim And Sam’s Tim And The Sam Band With Tim And Sam – Choices