shamfrolic-blog

[shamfrolic-blog]

Song of the Day

Bombay Bicycle Club - Still

[shamfrolic-blog]

Song of the Day

Shake It Out - Florence and The Machine

[shamfrolic-blog]

The Whole Love / Wilco (Adam Lowe)

After 17 years together and 7 studio albums, you’d think Wilco would be running out of ideas by now. Their last album, ‘Wilco (the album)’ seemed to confirm that this might be the case, with the possibility of one of America’s biggest indie bands losing prominence and urgency. They lacked the ambition and ingenuity captured on much of their back catalogue, particularly past albums ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ and ‘A Ghost Is Born’, seemingly just following a tried and tested formula, leaving them to be classed as ‘safe-rock’.

Thankfully for all Wilco fans, ‘The Whole Love’ does not play safe, and the bar has been pushed higher again. The album kicks off with ‘Art of Almost’, with a pulsating drumbeat and electronic swirls that seem to suggest a new direction for Wilco all together, before falling into a more familiar guitar groove. It is a sprawling song, and quite a remarkable introduction to the latest album – setting the scene capably and really capturing the interest of the listener.

What follows is a more typical Wilco song, but one of the strongest moments on the album. ‘I Might’ springs into actions with a pounding guitar line, as singer Jeff Tweedy sings ‘You won’t set the kids on fire/oh but I might’, showing his urgency as a songwriter is still evident to see. The song is in-your-face and jerks along, with a catchy organ hook playing incessantly in the background, ensuring the song works its way into your consciousness.

It is the ease with which Wilco are able to change their sound that is most interesting here, as the layers of instrumentation adds a new dimension to each song, with many sonic ebbs and flows. The band are constantly trying to evolve their sound and keep it fresh, which can be seen no more than on ‘Dawned On Me’, which manages to feel familiar and characteristically Wilco, but with a new layer added to it. Guitars clash and thrash densely with each other, whilst Tweedy melodiously sings ‘I can't help it if I fall/In love with you again/I'm calling just to let you know/It dawned on me’, showing the romantic optimism of his lyrics contrasting to the heavy sound of the track.

Yet this album comes with a much softer side, with warmth emanating from many of the more acoustic songs. ‘Sunloathe’ is a gentle song that slides along, much like the beautiful ‘Open Mind’, which sounds like a simple, Dylan-esque love song, as Tweedy captures the wistful and longing mood perfectly, crooning ‘Oh I can only dream of the dreams we'd have if our hearts would be entwined’. Tweedy has always been known for his passionate lyrics, and these must be some of his finest to date, comparable to Wilco’s own ‘Jesus, etc.’.

‘The Whole Love’ closes with song ‘One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)’, a 12 minute expansive track which, funnily enough, is perfect listening for a Sunday morning. The soothing and relaxing tone closes the album on a meditative note, showing the contrast between heavy and quieter songs on the album, with this twinkling acoustic number. Tweedy contemplates the struggle of aging and his strained relationship with his father, showing he still isn’t completely content with the world around him.

Though that may not be the best thing for him, for fans of music this must be good news. With Jeff Tweedy constantly challenging his surroundings and showing he has yet to become ‘safe’, Wilco’s music will only continue to grow under the weight of new ideas and thoughts, both lyrically and sonically. ‘The Whole Love’ is arguably Wilco’s finest album in years, managing to keep up with a back catalogue of classics – and offering much hope for the future of the band, showing they still have much to offer music yet.

Rating 4/5

[shamfrolic-blog]

Junk of the Heart / The Kooks (Kris De Souza)

Now, before you read this I have to point out something, I have always defended The Kooks and they have always been a guilty pleasure of mine, especially the first album, it was never to be taken seriously but it was fun, it was indie pop, diluted into a series of easy to listen to catchy choruses you could dance to or play in the car of your R&B loving girlfriend. However, since their second album Konk I’d consigned them to the heap, while it had some great little pop tracks longevity was bottom of list of qualities you’d attribute to the Luke and the gang.

  Someone, somewhere, behind a desk, probably, in an office with a Mc Fly poster on the wall, possibly, decided that it was a good idea to finance a third album. And, from a financial point of view it was a good idea as this morning the album is residing in the top ten. The problem is, that must have been down to their big fan base as it certainly isn’t charting that high on merit.

  I’m yet to read another review of this record but I’ll be surprised if there are many that are positive. In the most part the album remains at one tone and one pace. There is no Naïve or Always Where I Need to Be, the only track that really gets going and threatens something catchy and well, Kooky, is called Is it Me and even then it still doesn’t do it.

  Tracks like Rosie, are just rehashes of the same old formula. Its unimaginative and makes you want to go back to the first album to look for a similar song, done better. I’d question the thought process behind the calling a track Fuck the World Off, in what I can only assume is a desperate attempt at stirring up some controversy. It is in no way keeping with the what the band have done in the past and there is no real point to the line, “Let me fuck the world of just for you” its not even a common used phrase is it? Is it?

  I wish I could find something complimentary to say about this album because I have such a soft spot for the earlier stuff, in fact I was going to tell an anecdote about seeing The Kooks in Brixton 3 years ago where I lost my ticket only to find it, half hour later covered in tyre marks in the middle of the road just to avoid actually talking about how bad the album is.

  The Kooks aren’t known for delicate or complicated song writing, it is almost always aimed towards a girl and after 2 albums previous this same approach was always going to make this album a step too far. Five years ago the kooks were going up against fist pumping adrenalin fuelled bands like Hard Fi and Kaiser Chiefs or manufactured pop-guitar bands like Mc Fly. While they weren’t doing anything original or challenging it was different and served its purpose. Today they are up against a sea of talent, Bombay Bicycle Club for example are making the kind of indie pop that can appeal to both the casual listener and the more passionate and intellectual fan, while the kooks are still stuck in 2006.

  Rating 1/5

[shamfrolic-blog]

Interview: Matt Abbott / Skint and Demoralised, part three. (Kris De Souza)

In the final part of our feature with Skint and Demoralised’s Matt Abbott we talk about starting from scratch again and coming back with a new album backed by new label Heist or Hit.

  How did you turn things around and get the career back on track?

  By going back to my roots, partly through sheer luck at being asked to perform, I must say, and did a few spoken word gigs. However, instead of the short two or three minute bursts that I’d done before I was asked to perform a thirty-minute set in the Poetry Arena at Latitude Festival. I realise that I had to blend my poetry with stand-up material in order to fill the time slot. Miraculously, somehow, it worked. To this day I have no idea how I managed to get on stage with nothing but a microphone for a full half-an-hour and keep people entertained. But I did, and slowly I began to get some confidence back (I don’t think it needed saying that my confidence had taken an absolute battering in the last nine months or so). Clearly my performance impressed the promoters and Festival Republic then asked me to do the same set again on the Alternative Stage at Leeds Festival. It felt like I’d really achieved something; no manager, no booking agent and no active promotion. People were still interested in me, and I was managing to keep Skint & Demoralised alive even in this period of helpless inactivity. And so I stood on stage at Leeds Festival, exactly one year and one day after I’d stood there in front of 4,500 people, and I performed to a very responsive crowd. I was on at 11:15am on the Sunday, so there can’t have been more than around 1,000 there, but for me it was a bigger achievement that last year’s performance. In 2009, I was at our highest ever point, but the vultures were circling. In 2010, I was at our lowest ever point, but suddenly there was hope - something to build on. Without asking for it, I’d been given reassurance and a vote of confidence from complete strangers in a crowd. People wanted Skint & Demoralised – end of.

  That must have buoyed you somewhat and given you the confidence to move upwards, what was next?

  After telling MiNI dOG about Leeds Festival and my renewed optimism, he decided to pick his guitar up once more. We reworked one of the ‘solo’ tracks to make a new version of ’43 Degrees’. I read ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce and ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ by Alan Sillitoe for lyrical inspiration, as well as collecting other scraps of lyrics that I’d written over the past year or so. Around this time, we were told that Mercury would grant us the rights to release our debut album. I cannot possibly stress enough how rare this is, but somehow we managed it. The rights to the album were ours once more. We decided that we were going to write this second record for nobody but ourselves – after years of having to gain approval from managers and record labels – and realistically we knew that we wouldn’t get signed again, and so the plan was just to release it ourselves. Our manager (in contract but not in activity) had his own label, and had expressed a desire to give the debut a digital release. Over the autumn and early winter months of 2010, we wrote and recorded ‘This Sporting Life’. All of the recording, mixing and mastering was done in MiNI dOG’s home studio (6x7 in Sheffield) in the same way that our original sessions, and I wrote lyrics whenever I wasn’t completing my second stint as a Christmas temp at HMV Wakefield. We’d created this album with no involvement or interference from anybody whatsoever, and as it turns out it’s an album that we’re both incredibly proud of.

  So you’ve made an album but you’re still not signed, how do you get back out there, how did you end up with a great independent like Heist or Hit?

  By the time that 2011 came, I was determined to get a deal with the new album. Let’s face it – we had two finished albums ready to go with an existing fan-base from back in 2009. Surely it was an attractive enough proposition? Well, not quite, and for a few months it was horribly quiet. Hundreds of e-mails sent every day, all of which went unanswered. It was just me against the world – trying to pull in contacts, generate buzz via the likes of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, desperately trying to find someone who’d show our project faith and release the albums. In March, we found a small German indie label called Firestation Records, who agreed to release the debut album on vinyl. We came to a third-party agreement, where they’d try and license our material to other labels around the globe for a cut, and through this made another agreement with Fastcut Records in Japan. They’d release both albums on CD. Things were looking up, and we considered releasing the album digitally ourselves in the UK through an online site called AWAL. And then Lady Luck arrived on the scene. Fastcut Records was the Japanese label for UK band The Answering Machine, who at the time were signed to Heist Or Hit Records over here. Whilst the two labels were chatting, S&D were mentioned and Heist Or Hit (who had been fans back in ‘08/09) contacted me via Facebook. They were interested. We met in Manchester – interest gathered and an agreement was reached. We’d done it. From nothing whatsoever (no money, no manager, no label) we’d managed to find something and forge a plan. Live shows with the new line-up were gathering momentum and suddenly Skint & Demoralised were a band again.

  That must be a good feeling, what does this new album mean to you?

  For us, ‘This Sporting Life’ is an act of defiance. We wrote and recorded it at a time when Skint & Demoralised seemed miles away from existence. The trips to New York, celebrity parties and television appearances were all a distant memory. Nobody cared about us anymore, to the point where even creating this album was probably a waste of time. But that’s the joy of creating art – there’s no such thing as a waste of time. We were doing it purely for enjoyment. Had we done a second record under the pressures of a major label, it probably wouldn’t be anywhere as good. In fact I’m certain it wouldn’t - a different producer, an expensive studio and the knowledge that there’s a watchful ear waiting to judge your every move. It would have felt forced and therefore contrived. Not having anyone else to answer to allowed us to explore new avenues, and lyrically I’ve grown from a teenage boy to a young man. I became obsessed with the British new wave of cinema; the kitchen-sink dramas such as ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, ‘A Taste of Honey’ and of course ‘Room at the Top’. These inspired me and influenced me far more than any other lyricists did. The record is incredibly simple in its production and instrumentation, and manages to be a development on the first album as well as being in many ways the antithesis. It feels like our little secret that we’d created in private, and therefore the sense of achievement feels much higher. There must have been a hundred people involved in the production and promotion of the first album. Up until we signed to Heist Or Hit Records, there was two people involved in this one. So who will triumph in the story of S&D – the global superpower that is Universal or the tiny indie Heist Or Hit? I’ll end with a quote from a great man – Kevin Keegan. “I would love it – LOVE IT – if we beat them.”

  Having listened to the album, a lot, I can vouch that its well worth buying, not only is it a real testament to Matt and his determination but you can really hear the honesty in the lyrics. Musically it will get you tapping your foot for sure, in this day and age its hard pushed to find a more charismatic and intriguing front man than Matt Abbott, in fact, I recently went to see the band play in Camden and there were several people jiving at the front of the stage not wanting to feel left out Matt signalled down to join them, they were however oblivious to Matt’s intentions and just as he leapt from the stage the group decided to take a drink break leaving Abbott twisting to himself, but instead of embarrassing him it warmed him to the crowd.

After the show the entire band were happy to chat to fans about anything from music to football manager, all of them humble and genuinely pleased just to have had a stage for the evening.

The spoken word interludes Matt performs are well worth catching live as well. My particular favourite is a well observed piece about the BNP, their hypocrisy and the great British night out. The lyrics are delivered with passion and a sincere pride in this multicultural nation it is impossible not to be endeared to Skint and Demoralised.

  Shamfrolic are also pleased to anounce that you would be able to catch Skint and Demoralised play at our November club night, details to be released soon!

  This Sporting Life is out now grab your copy here.

[shamfrolic-blog]

Song of the Day

Stay Gold - The Big Pink

One of the most underrated bands of 2009 are back with this single, we think that in places it sounds a lot like a Horrors track, can you guess which one?

[shamfrolic-blog]

Interview: Matt Abbott / Skint and Demoralised, part two. (Kris De Souza)

Moving to the big smoke, battling the cyber pirates, being dropped and not paying for drinks, here’s part two of our interview with Matt Abbott from Skint and Demoralised.

  You’ve always spoken highly of London can you go into detail about your time here?

  Ever since I’d started going down to London on ‘business trips’ at the end of 2007, I was desperate to move down there. And I mean really desperate. Every time I went down I’d be staying in a flashy hotel, given VIP passes to gigs and parties, taken ‘shopping’ for free clothes, having a meeting at the label – you get the picture. At some points I was up and down three times a week with various meetings, video shoots and such and I was on first name terms with the staff at the K-West Hotel for the first few months of 2009. The time finally came in spring of that year when I moved into a shared three-bedroom house in Islington, North London. This was where things really started to get crazy, and the number of extremely happy moments was side-by-side with the number of extremely harrowing ones. Again, I don’t want to go into too much detail of course because this is public after all, but it wouldn’t do the story justice if I skipped over this altogether.

London is a wonderful place when you’re down for 48 hours for a gig or a party or a meeting or whatever. People go out of their way to come for a drink because they know that you live 250 miles away, but once you’ve moved to London, the other 5 nights of the week suddenly feel very empty and lonely. Anybody who lives in or has lived in London will tell you that it is a callous and lonely place when it wants to be. It’s far too easy to disappear and lose yourself, and what’s more you have to be wary of people who are entirely fake - in a way that I’d never encountered before. Its insane how many people live entirely beneath a façade for the whole time, and the trusting naïve Northerner in me often had me caught unaware. So take a moment to picture the situation if you will: I’m twenty years old. I’m living in London with two guys that I’ve never met and it feels like I’m worlds apart from my family and friends. I’m already under immense pressure with the music career, coupled with the fact that I’m now being constantly analysed from every single angle: on the radio, on the TV, in newspapers/magazines (or being interviewed for either one), performing at a gig, shooting a video, having photos taken, you name it...it was like being in Big Brother for months on end. Not good for a man with insecurities and anxieties which, as you may have guessed, were being increased tenfold by my level of drinking. You see this is the problem with being in a band – when is there a time that it’s inappropriate to have a drink? You drink at gigs (whether performing or attending), often meet journalists in a pub or bar and are even encouraged to ‘loosen up’ with a few drinks on video or photo shoots. It’s not as if you ever have to sit in an office, is it? And there were no real friends or family members to monitor what I was up to or tell me when to stop. It was very easy to slip beneath the shadows when doing so. My housemates were at work during the day, and I’d either be out or be locked in my bedroom drinking at night. The fact that I was gigging with constantly interchanging session musicians made matters worse, and at one point I’d be drinking as early as 7am on the tour van to and from gigs. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an alcoholic, but the sheer level of anxiety, paranoia, insecurity and fear that was now a constantly reality had left me in a bit of a mess. And then we started the campaign for ‘Red Lipstick’. It’s a scary world, this music business.

July was a highly surreal month indeed. Sara Cox had named ‘Red Lipstick’ as her ‘Weekend Anthem’ on Radio 1 for the weekend when I was experiencing my first ever Glastonbury, and at this point I was meeting fellow Yorkshireman Chris Moyles in the pub every week. I appeared on ‘Loose Women’ as a guest, doing both an interview and a live performance. We supported The Noisettes as part of the iTunes Festival at The Roundhouse in Camden in front of around 5,000 people. I did a ‘Bizarre Session’ for The Sun. People were stopping me in the street or in the underground and asking for pictures. It felt like we were really on the brink of something big happening, and suddenly what had seemed like a fairytale just a year ago (and utterly inconceivable two years ago) was gradually becoming my reality. And then the single was released: UK #100.

  After such a disappointing chart position, the writing must have been on the wall?

  One side effect of crippling insecurity is an overwhelming urge for approval and affection. I’d started seeing a girl in July but became utterly besotted straight-away and by the start of August, she told me it was over. That afternoon (no exaggeration), I met with my manager and two of the guys from the label to discuss S&D’s ‘future’. Only, as far as they were concerned, there was no future. Not for S&D, anyway. The album – which at this point was due out in October – was to be scrapped. Our autumn tour was to be cancelled. The name S&D and everything that we’d done so far was to be tossed aside. We’d announce in September (once we’d fulfilled all of our live obligations) that the band had split, and subsequently I’d be embarking on a ‘solo career’ with a ‘new sound’ and a ‘new identity’. Were they going to give me a voice-box and book me in for a face transplant, or...? Two days later, I received a call from MiNI dOG. Our accountant had been in touch. We’d completely run out of money. The retainer that we’d received the previous week was to be our last, despite the fact that I was living in London with four-figure monthly out-goings. Great, thanks for that. I spent the next few days wandering around in a haze of disbelief and despondency. Last month everything was happening. My dream was being realised. This month it’s all over. I’d have to move back to Wakefield. The label were refusing to proceed with Skint & Demoralised – the album would be forever condemned to file-sharing sites and promos on eBay. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?! The most frustrating thing of all when I look back on this is our performance at Leeds Festival at the end of that month. I knew full well that the vultures were circling, but for musicians in West Yorkshire, Leeds Festival is the Holy Grail and I was still immensely excited to be playing. We were opening the Festival Republic stage – the first band of the whole weekend at 12 noon on the Friday. I was hoping for a crowd of roughly 500. It was absolutely packed to the rafters – around 4,500 people were there to see us. The gig was sensational. I’d never felt that high in my entire life, and as I ran off stage to celebrate as the crowd gave a reprising rendition of ‘Red Lipstick’, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was tearful. The people in that tent in Leeds felt a part of something exciting that was only just beginning. The people in that boardroom in West London had already signed the death warrant.

  You mentioned file sharing and promo’s ending up on eBay, I know the new album was leaked as well, how does that affect bands like yourselves?

  It was one of the contributing factors to the single’s poor chart position, the fact that the album leaked heavily in spring. We started our ‘campaign’ in October and originally gave the release date as May, and there’s only so long that you can keep people waiting. When it was announced in March that the album wouldn’t be out until July, people just weren’t prepared to wait. Full-length promos had been distributed by the label and as a consequence, the album was available across file-sharing sites and on eBay straight away - before we’d even started with ‘Red Lipstick’. So every time we received coverage – and I had to say, we did receive quite a lot – people could go online and download ‘Red Lipstick’. The demo version that I’d uploaded in 2007 had also been doing the rounds of course, so it really wasn’t that hard to access. By the time we released the track officially through iTunes and the like on 12th July, pretty-much everybody that wanted the track already had it. Buying it was utterly pointless. You see, this is the damage that illegal file-sharing does: people no longer see music as something that should be bought. They just see it as something to listen to. It’s not that they don’t realise the damage that’s done when they illegally download it, it’s that they don’t even think about it. Why would Universal be bothered about missing out on their 79p? Trouble is they missed out on a few thousand 79p’s. I’m going to tell a brief anecdote now that might make me look a twat, but I genuinely think it makes a very good point.

During that summer I visited home a couple of times. On one occasion I went into a pub my native Wakefield area, and the barman thought I’d appreciate it if he played ‘Red Lipstick’ on the system whilst I was in there. I was embarrassed as it’s a very awkward situation to be in, but I thanked him for buying it nevertheless. “Buy it?” he remarked. “I didn’t bloody buy it, lad! Who pays for music these days?” Instead of arguing back, I simply ordered a vodka and lemonade. He poured the drink, placed it on the side and then turned towards the till. As he did so, I downed the drink and walked towards the door. “Eyup, where are you going?” he asked. “Buy it?!” I replied. “I’m not bloody buying it, lad!” and then walked out. I’m sure most will see it as petty and childish. But as far as I see it, the only difference between what he did and what I did is that I did it to his face. The equivalent of releasing music is like a newsagent leaving a stack of newspapers outside with a pot next to it for people to put the money in. Some people will, but these days sadly most people won’t. I suppose it’s like skipping the train fare as well. Why pay when you can get something for free? If you can’t see the knock-on effects then you don’t necessarily realise that there are any.

  A lot of people would argue that you, the band, don’t see much of the album sales anyway so why does it matter?

  That’s the thing, when musicians complain about illegal file-sharing and urge people to buy music instead, it just sounds like they’re greedy and trying to line their own pockets. The money doesn’t go into our pockets – it goes towards videos, photo shoots, websites, t-shirts, CD manufacturing and all sorts of other expenses, not to mention touring. With a label like Mercury, it was more the low chart position than the low income generated that did the damage. They can’t face the embarrassment of releasing an album that didn’t reach the Top 40 and so they’d rather not release it at all. But with the smaller independent labels, such as my current label Heist Or Hit, that income is what they rely on just to be able to fund the basics. Any profits go straight back into the next video or the next tour. Unfortunately, the artistic aspect of music cannot prosper unless the business aspect is allowed to function. That is merely the cold, hard reality of it. And when 90% of the label’s income is removed by illegal file-sharing sites stealing their potential custom, it makes an already difficult job nigh-on impossible. Alternative acts find it extremely difficult to get anywhere near breaking onto the national scene, and so the market becomes saturated with mainstream pop and R&B (as the current trends would have it). And then people complain that there aren’t any decent bands these days, and the only way that mainstream “indie” fans can get their fix is by either shelling-out £80 to watch Kings of Leon do another arena tour or wait for the next big reunion gig.

  So when the band is over, the money has gone, what do you do next?

  I moved back up North and under the watchful eye of my parents I seriously cut-down with the drinking and found a group of mates that I now class as the closest friends I’ve ever had in my life. They currently make up the live band in Skint & Demoralised. Obviously it took a long time to adjust to what had happened and I was heartbroken that the S&D album would never see its official release. I just couldn’t believe what had happened. It was over before it had even begun, and whilst bands like The Wombats and Scouting For Girls continue to tour O2 Academies, I was being forced to apply for a Christmas temp job at HMV just so that I could cover my bills by stacking their CD’s. It felt as though I’d been dealt a gross injustice, but attentions were temporarily diverted by the prospect of my ‘solo career’. We were, after all, still signed to Mercury. Working at HMV over Christmas brought me back down to earth. It made me realise how lucky I’d been to receive a wage every month for doing something that I love so much, and it also made me more determined than ever to turn things around and continue pursuing my career. The less said about the “solo project” the better, but let’s just say that it was a disaster and by the end of spring 2010 we’d officially been dropped. At this point I was working at another HMV store on a rolling part-time contract, but with no realistic prospect of a music career ahead. S&D had “split” and the solo career had been binned. So what do I do from here?

  Keep your eyes peeled for pt 3 this Friday and remember you can still download the latest single Hogmanay Heroes   here.

[shamfrolic-blog]

Song of the Day

Better Off Without You - Summer Camp

Another day, another brilliant split screen video and like yesterday, Summer Camp are a firm Shamfrolic favourite. We ruddy luv 'em. So please enjoy and get yourselves over to http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/summercamp and you can still get your hands onto some serious goodies alongside your copy of the upcoming album!

[shamfrolic-blog]

Father, Son, Holy Ghost / Girls (Kris De Souza)

Back in 2008 I really started to throw myself into discovering new bands, I couldn’t get enough, I’d listen to as much new stuff as I could download or get my ears on. I’d find a band or go to a gig and come back to work and email my close circle of mates excited to spread the word or warn them off whatever it was I’d heard, its stayed that way for three years now and that’s why I started Shamfrolic. Now, as you would expect not all of these bands I was recommending would go down well within the group of 5 of us but one band in September 2009 did, it was Girls and their imaginatively named debut album, called… Album. Father, Son, Holy Ghost, is the latest release and I see know reason that it wont follow in the footsteps of its predecessor and get all five of our heads nodding in approval.

  Opening track Honey Bunny kicks off in familiar style with its catchy sunshine chorus and Beach Boys guitars and harmonies, the drums roll like 6 foot waves and it just sounds like a sunny beachside. While a casual listen would reaffirm all this, if you listen closer to Christopher Owens lyrics you’ll hear intelligence and heartbreak. Its not just simple retro-pop, it’s deeper, more complex and beautiful. Owens writing just gets better and better.

  My Ma is possibly one of the best songs of the year, let alone this album with an organ reminiscent of Whiter Shade of Pale the track exudes beauty from every last bit of percussion to the sumptuous guitar solo in the middle. As with the entire album there is just something subtly familiar yet completely original about every track. This band aren’t ashamed of drawing in influences from the past but what they do is twist and turn it into something new and quite beautiful.

  Take Vomit for example, it’s a six and half minute journey. A ballad that Jim Steinman would be proud of, it encompasses so many different sounds from yesteryear but it doesn’t sound like some half arsed spliced up jive bunny type megamix it blends 70’s soul and 80’s rock with gospel vocals to form a simply classic song. Magic is a track that has a very bluesy country western feel but with wonderful pop lyrics, it’s a proven formula that bands like the Beach Boys and Beatles perfected for years but Girls manage to pull it off without sounding like a tribute band.

  Its not all rock on this album though Forgiveness is for the most part a sombre acoustic number that tugs at the heart strings, “No one’s gonna find any answers, if you’re looking in the dark / when you’re looking for a reason… to give up” however just when you think its gone on a bit too long it takes off into a Pink Floyd-esque outro that makes you glad you didn’t reach for the skip button 5 minutes.

  When so many bands struggle to make a second album as good as the first, Christopher Owens and Chet White have surpassed the first record, the stop gap EP from last year showed they weren’t resting on their laurels and this album has fulfilled the expectation that Broken Dreams Club promised. It’s a genuine joy to listen to and will no doubt feature in any serious top 10 of the year. I’m always conscious of reviews being too favourable on the site but I seriously can’t fault this album. Go and buy it, NOW.

  Rating 5/5

[shamfrolic-blog]

Song of the Day

By Your Hand - Los Campesinos! FREE download of the track here.

This is the first single from the new LC! album Hello Sadness, I cant wait for this album to drop I've pre ordered the vinyl bundle here, and you can still get tickets to see them this winter here.

[shamfrolic-blog]

Interview: Matt Abbott / Skint and Demoralised, part one. (Kris De Souza)

This is part one of a 3 part feature in which we get a brutally honest insight into the music industry and life in a band from Skint and Demoralised front man Matt Abbott, after signing to Mercury Records in 2008 the band were hotly tipped to be a success in 2009 and after being bankrolled to record the debut album, Love, And Other Catastrophes, between studios in London and New York they were cruelly dropped. Now the band have returned with a new album, This Sporting Life and backed by a new label (and Shamfrolic favourite) Heist Or Hit Records.

   Ok lets start at the beginning, how did Skint and Demoralised come into being?

  Back in May 2007, I was an eighteen-year-old performance poet in the closing stages of my A-Levels. I’d started doing the performance poetry because I loved the thrill of getting on stage in a musical environment and for me that was the closest I could ever get to being in a band. I’m not a natural singer and I don’t play any instruments. Also, performance poetry at indie gigs in West Yorkshire always took the audience by complete surprise. A long-haired lad in skinny jeans grabbing the mic and starting to rant in rhyme about ‘Barbara from Scarborough’ before fiercely protesting against the BNP was the last thing that they expected. Obviously, I’m familiar with spoken word greats such as the legendary John Cooper Clarke and Attila the Stockbroker, but to the masses it is an unknown art-form. I liked standing-out. I liked being unconventional. I’d perform when and where it was suitable; gigs, birthday parties, house parties, political rallies – anywhere that would have me. I was known on the local music scene as “poem boy” before the name “Skint & Demoralised” started to sink in.

  So how did you get from standing on a stage with just a microphone and your verse to becoming the front man of an entire band?

  It was after a few “support slots” with Reverend and The Makers in Wakefield and Leeds that I started to become well-known across the West Yorkshire music scene. It was at this stage that R&TM released ‘Heavyweight Champion of the World’ and left me far beneath their radar, and also at this stage that I was approached by an elusive dance producer from Sheffield going by the pseudonym ‘MiNI dOG’. I’d had a couple of offers from bands via MySpace at this stage – they were curious as to how my poetry could potentially convert to lyrics – but so far nothing had actually come to fruition. MiNI dOG started by cutting-up my poor mobile phone recordings and layering them over some dance instrumentals that had recently won him ‘Demo of the Week’ in NME Magazine. It wasn’t particularly a musical style that I’d aspired to, but our early muse was a shared love for ‘Born Slippy’ by Underworld and I of course turned to ‘Original Pirate Material’ by The Streets for inspiration as one of the groundbreaking albums in my musical youth. Lyrically, my poems were all designed to be snappy and humorous and always with a punch-line – if you’re grabbing the mic and talking in rhyme in a pub or at a gig then you need to keep the audience’s attention. So the early songs documented my ‘Seaside Shenanigans’, my tales of getting beaten-up in my hometown whilst trying to pursue a young lady, and my memories of ‘Free Shots, Fishbowls, Four-for-One’ on a recent 18-30 holiday with my college mates.

  And what does that first album mean to you now, looking back?

  It’s special to me because those are the first lyrics that I ever wrote, and so the whole approach towards writing them was blissfully naïve and freed from any preconceptions or ambitions. They weren’t written with the knowledge that they’d ever be properly released and at that stage I wasn’t conscious of where my lyrics should go or what kind of balance I’d need across a twelve track album. They simply form the painstakingly honest poetic diary of a teenage lad with his heart on his sleeve. Obviously now that I look back, there are one or two lines that make me cringe here and there and a few tracks that I’d much rather not listen to, but on the whole I’m still proud to have co-written ‘Love, And Other Catastrophes’.

Those earlier songs were comic on first listen, but there was instantly an underlying darkness that really excited us. In hindsight it carried similar tones to the first Happy Mondays album in that there are always two sides to Shaun Ryder’s lyrics, and the ominous undertones are always the ones that leave a lasting impression. I met up with MiNI dOG and instantly realised that a song-writing partnership – and indeed a great friendship – was born. We clicked immediately and developed a great understanding. Clearly at that stage I was naïve and inexperienced, but gradually he guided me and moulded me as our mutual side projects began to develop. I stopped writing poetry and turned my attention towards lyrics when he encouraged me to write something about my girlfriend at the time, which formed the lyrics to ‘It’s Only Been A Week’. A few months later she ended the brief relationship and the classic break-up lyric came with ‘One Way Traffic’. As I continued with my elaborate exploits throughout 2007 – taking in a three holidays in total (an 18-30 in Malia, Benicàssim Festival in Spain and then a huge Halloween Party in Derry) – the lyrics were never short of inspiration. My rule was simple: if it didn’t happen then I didn’t write about it.

When I think back, I was documenting the most exciting time of my life. At the age of 18 you have the perfect balance of adulthood without the curse of too much responsibility. I started working at the First Direct call centre in Leeds, which I absolutely fucking despised, but fortunately I still had time to write. It was in the middle of July when S&D had its first major breakthrough. A voicemail message that was left on MiNI dOG’s phone from a pub toilet in Leeds was the first ever version of ‘Red Lipstick’. The incredibly catchy chorus hook was backed by a simple Northern Soul-inspired groove, and suddenly we started to develop into something that we were both comfortable with. The clattering Motown drums on ‘The Thrill of Thirty Seconds’, the dark Amy Winehouse-esque beat on ‘Only Lust Ignores Violence Involving Ambulances’ and the soulful female backing vocals that feature prominently in almost every song were all combining to make our signature sound. MiNI dOG will be the first to admit that he didn’t know when to stop when adding things to the tracks; indeed, our debut album features brass, strings, glockenspiels, keyboards, congas and organs on top of the standard vocal, guitar, bass and drum set-up. Our shared love for The Smiths is reflected in his jangly Johnny Marr-inspired guitar parts and the Hammond organs that sit beneath a few of the tracks. My spoken word style doesn’t vary greatly but the lyrics are delivered with passion and sincerity, and told in their truest form. We had tried several times to record me singing throughout some of the early demos but it soon became apparent to MiNI dOG that I wasn’t a natural singer. I sang on the choruses to maintain their hook and help the songs stand-out, but the lyrical style and indeed the origins of our song-writing partnership were maintained in the conversational verses.

The real beauty of this album is that neither of us had any idea where we’d go or what would happen with the songs that we were writing together. For me, even just hearing my voice on a song was ridiculously exciting, but I soon began to realise that the record we were compiling was genuinely something special. Obviously I liked it and to an extent I fully expected my friends and family to like it too, but before long I emerged as a ruthlessly ambitious young man and was determined to take Skint & Demoralised further than anybody – myself and MiNI dOG included – initially expected. The whole story of being played on BBC Radio 1 by Steve Lamacq and Colin Murray after 6 months and then signing to Mercury Records after 9 months has been told a million times. I don’t need to go into that. But the excitement of how rapidly S&D was developing and the sudden realisation of the possibilities that we had will always resonate in the first album for me. Nobody would have thought that a faceless middle-aged producer from Sheffield and an entirely inexperienced Wakefield teenager doing spoken word would ever get further than first on the bill or the odd novelty play on BBC Radio Sheffield. Within thirteen months of forming we were sat in The Daptone Studios in Brooklyn, New York whilst one of the most famous soul session bands in the world began working on our debut album.

  Can you go into detail about getting signed, I think for those not in the know it can easily be construed that that’s the summit, you’ve made it, but what’s it really like?

  Being picked-up by a major label was the most incredibly surreal, exhilarating and ultimately terrifying experience of my life. There is simply no way that you can explain it. When you write songs as a teenager, of course you think you’re the dog’s bollocks deep down. Of course you think the songs are brilliant, and why wouldn’t anyone else? That’s only natural. It’s bound to happen. But when the most respected champion of new music since John Peel agrees by playing it on his Radio 1 show, and then the biggest record label in the entire world sticks you in a luxury hotel and tells you that they want to offer you a record deal, you suddenly sit back and think: “Shit. Maybe they are fucking brilliant.” It’s not like winning the lottery because this is something that you’ve created; these are lyrics that I’d written on our family PC at home, in a notepad on holiday in Spain, on the bus back from working in the call centre. These were our little creations that were suddenly being talked about alongside six-figure sums at Universal HQ. I’m not saying this to brag by any means; I’m merely trying to demonstrate the scale of it all. Nine months after we’d even talked. Two months after I’d turned nineteen. How can you even begin to comprehend something like that without being carried-away by it all? I soon became accustomed to, but without taking for granted, some of the VIP treatment that was on offer with a major label. Travelling in First Class on the train and then having a driver collect you from the station to take you to your flashy four-star hotel in Shepherd’s Bush. Free designer clothes and a monthly retainer that was double the amount of what I earned in my relatively well-paid job at First Direct. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tom Jones and Alex Turner at the Q Awards and then dancing next to Sugababes in The Met Bar afterwards, absolutely hammered on free booze. It all sounds wonderful, but the one thing that I wanted more than anything in the world was to release that album.

  But what is the reality? It can’t all be popping corks and pop stars?

  It soon occurred to me that everything in the music industry was a painstakingly slow process. Jobs that you’d expect to take three days are closer to three weeks, and you can often go a fortnight without anything happening at all. Sure, I was excited to have signed, but I’d gone from everything happening at lightning pace to pretty-much nothing happening at all. After three months, we finally flew to New York City to begin the sessions. Recording with The Dap-Kings was MiNI dOG’s idea – he knew that he had to think of something ridiculously elaborate in order to win the role of producer, and somehow it worked. Insanely expensive and lavish ideas are very popular at major labels. Recording the album was at times a horrendous experience and at other times a wonderful one. The initial session in New York was a disaster; the Dap-Kings were too stubborn to learn any of the tracks in advance and recording on their analogue gear whilst they worked through their first ever takes meant that a lot of post-production had to be done back in Sheffield. We had literally no choice on the matter. We spent a few weeks recording at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire which was somewhere that MiNI dOG had worked before, as well as being the place where Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs recorded their debuts. Unfortunately that session was also unsuccessful, and so the bulk of the work was completed at RAK Studios in London. During this time I was staying in the ‘apartment’ that was owned by the studio. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before in terms of its decadence and features, and when I think back it baffles me as to just how much was being spent. Nobody made us aware that we’d have to pay this money back, of course. Oh no. RAK was a wonderful place, and the icing on the cake came with our own personal chef who cooked us a wide range of beautiful meals ranging from all over the globe whenever we fancied in the evening. For a good few weeks, life was simply untouchable. And then came the hard bit.

Now the problem with being on a major label and having a manager that was very much of the major label mentality himself is that I soon absorbed the outlook, behaviour and indeed jargon that the label used. Naturally I wanted to be as heavily involved as possible with our ‘campaign’, and so release schedules, playlists, marketing strategies and ‘service cycles’ were all a part of my day-to-day conversation. I was told-off for mentioning such things in interviews because it made me sound ‘too corporate’, but ultimately I was just obsessed with my career and how it was developing. After all, I had driven the machine (with guidance from MiNI dOG, of course) from nowhere to the brink of superstardom in a very short space of time. I’d spent hours upon hours updating a makeshift website including a busy forum (which was deleted by the label in favour of a “holding page” which stayed there for three years) as well as working on social networking and self-promotion sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Bebo and XFM Unsigned. It felt very strange and indeed very scary to think that everything I’d worked for and everything that I most cared about in the world was now in the hands of a team of strangers in West London, who were now solely responsible for either creating or destroying my chances of a successful music career. I found it incredibly frustrating that I wasn’t allowed to label meetings. Surely if anybody was qualified to make a decision on how S&D should be “sold” then it was me?! I realise that this was extremely naïve, but the frustration never quite died-down. It just didn’t make any sense to me.

  What was it like having your first single released and out there for the world to buy?

  I will always remember the first week that our debut single was ‘serviced’ to radio and press. We were doing a limited run of 500 7” vinyl copies of ‘The Thrill of Thirty Seconds’ and so a chart position was out of the picture. This was just intended to create buzz and gather momentum ahead of the New Year. It was during the same fortnight that we were finishing the mixes for the album, and whilst we were doing so I was staying in a small Georgian hotel near Regent’s Park. I began to put myself under immense pressure. This was it: no more speculation, no more ‘what if’ and ‘maybe’. It had to start happening now or it wasn’t going to happen at all. There was an eerie silence for most of the first week before Steve Lamacq decided to play us on the following Monday night slot on BBC Radio 1. Finally the ‘campaign’ had officially started, but rather foolishly I’d attempted to find solace in a bottle of transparent liquid. After a summer of singing lessons (the less said about which the better), I’d started rehearsing with a new band of session musicians whilst MiNI dOG and Richard Woodcraft mixed the album at RAK. I began drinking vodka as early as 10 or 11am – under the impression that it would remove the pressure and create a “comfortable haze” to “ease me through the day”. What I wasn’t aware of at the time of course is that alcohol is a depressant and only serves to exacerbate any anxiety, insecurity, fear, paranoia and worry that may be currently occupying your brain. On the last day of the week I broke down in tears in the mixing studio after I’d been drinking all day, and the rest of the room could only continue fiddling with knobs in an awkward silence as I attempted to console myself.

The single went well – culminating in a successful hometown launch on the night that Colin Murray named it as his ‘Record of the Week’ on Radio 1 – and the most encouraging of all was a ‘Ones To Watch’ feature by Dan Cairns in the Sunday Times Culture. Cairns being the Editor of said publication and therefore one of the most well-known and respected broadsheet journalists in the country. Such an accolade was extremely impressive as we approached the start of 2009 – knowing full well that the possibilities were practically endless. I discovered months later that the label were convinced that we’d be appearing on the BBC Sound Poll for 2009, to the point where they’d planned the whole ‘campaign’ around it. Of course we didn’t, and the scheduled album release was moved back from spring and into summer. I don’t want to go into any specific instances because it isn’t really fair, but let’s just say that there were a handful of blunders at the label that still baffle me to this day. The element of blind luck, stabbing in the dark and ludicrous speculation when it comes to changing people’s lives is quite horrendous.

  Describe your feelings on the release of your second single and the reaction that it got?

  ‘This Song Is Definitely Not About You’ didn’t go as well as the label would have hoped, and at the last minute they removed the option of a download on the track so that a chart position wasn’t possible. Despite this we had a very successful headline tour of the UK in February and it was clear that we were starting to grow a nationwide fan-base. As we approached spring, everybody reached the cold realisation that ‘Red Lipstick’ would have to be the next single. This had been hailed all-along as the ‘breakthrough’ track and whilst we were all excited to ‘launch’ it, deep down we knew that we weren’t in as strong a position as we’d have hoped. We wanted a stronger platform to launch ‘Red Lipstick’ from. We’d hoped for more momentum at this point; ‘Red Lipstick’ was supposed to tip us over the edge, but instead it was going to have to do most of the leg-work as well. Before I talk about the summer ‘campaign’, I should probably delve into my personal life a bit. Give the story another angle, I suppose. I feel that this is necessary in order to paint the entire picture now that I’m sat with the comfort of hindsight in 2011.

We’ll bring you the remaining parts over the course of this week, but in the mean time check out the bands latest single which is our Song of the Day here, and you can download it for free here.

[shamfrolic-blog]

Song of the Day

Skint and Demoralised - Hogmanay Heroes - Plus FREE download!

Grab the free download of this, the latest S&D track here.

[shamfrolic-blog]

A Creature I Dont Know / Laura Marling (Adam Lowe)

Looking at most 21 year olds with a career in music, you’d assume they’re just starting out and trying to create a fan base. Not so for Laura Marling, who is already a staple of the music scene in Britain, a talent like no other. She recorded her first album ��Alas, I Cannot Swim’ at the tender age of 17, showing maturity and urgency unique of an artist so young. 2010’s ‘I Speak Because I Can’ showed a more assured side from Marling and a leap forward in confidence, confirming her as one of the figureheads of the burgeoning British folk scene. But it is with Marling’s third album, ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’, that she really showcases her talents, crafting an album of intricate tales with a maturity well beyond her years.

‘A Creature I Don’t Know’ is a beast of an album, but one marked in contrast to the subtle qualities it has. Marling conveys her emotions adeptly, but still manages to remain aloof, never offering a real window into her innermost thoughts. It is this lyrical ambiguity that often leaves the listener wondering just how to interpret her lyrics. Sonically the album is similar to ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’, due in part to her continued work with producer Ethan Johns, with the folk-rock aspect a core basis of her sound, but with a more intimate setting for her lyrics to come forth – a setting for the ferocity of her emotional voice to truly impact.

Opener ‘The Muse’ does sound markedly different, however, opening with a shuffling and almost jazzy drum beat, reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, with a light piano daintily pulling the song along. Marling croons ‘Don’t you be scared of me/I’m nothing but the beast/And I’ll call on you when I need to feast’, a testament to her ever-growing authority. The idea of this ‘beast’ continues on the aptly titled ‘The Beast’, as Marling solemnly sings ‘Instead I got the beast/and tonight he lies with me’, bursting into a dark and intensely powerful guitar section; one of her rockiest songs to date.

The strength and brutish power leads into ‘Night After Night’, arguably her finest song to date, but a sharp contrast to the authoritative side seen before. Gentle guitar fingerpicking leads Marling to almost whisper in lamentation, mysteriously singing ‘Night after night, day after day /Would you watch my body weaken, my mind drift away’ – her strength and confidence gives way to a call of vulnerability, as she admits we are all fallible at heart, no-one more so than a confessional folk singer.

But when she is confessional, it is matched with a certain cynicism and vindictiveness, almost as if Marling doesn’t think you should know her true feelings. She sings ‘Oh I have been wondering’, making you wonder where before she nonchalantly says ‘where I’ve been lately is no concern of yours’. Oh. Even so, the song is graced with a countrified feel, starting off lightly before exploding into a full rock wig-out, which is seemingly the formula for much of the album. ‘Salinas’ is a bare song that gives gravitas to her lyrics, as she ponders ‘Will I ever see heaven again?’, pertaining to a lost paradise she is trying to reclaim, before hitting you straight in the face with a bluesy guitar finish. ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ starts off gently with a very laconic style, sonically and lyrically, before leading into a big chorus, singing ‘Those of us who are lost and low/we know how you feel’.

This may be the truth - for all of Laura Marling’s lyrical ambiguities, she knows how we feel, and has put many of those emotions into her songs. Her empathy with the frailty of love and the fear of weakness and failure we all worry over are clear to see here, and though it may not offer us a deeper understanding of the aloof singer, ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’ allows us a deeper understanding of ourselves. A stunningly complex album both musically and lyrically, Marling has truly hit her stride at the grand old age of 21.

4.5/5

[shamfrolic-blog]

A Different Kind of Fix / Bombay Bicycle Club (Adam Lowe)

Before I start this review, I’d like to make one thing clear – I have a strong bias in favour of this band. I have been following Bombay Bicycle Club from their roots as an obscure band beginning their career to where they stand today, as one of the key fixtures of Britain’s alternative scene. Their first two albums are two of my all-time favourites, and my favourite two gigs of all time were when I saw the band live, at the launch show of their first album ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose’ and at a stunning acoustic performance after the release of their second album, ‘Flaws’. I have shared this band with friends, imbuing some of their songs with the memories of times past. So in all honesty, I don’t think I can say much of a bad word against this band.

The good thing is, I don’t need to. With their third album ‘A Different Kind of Fix’, Bombay Bicycle Club have managed to take the core sound of ‘I Had The Blues…’, mixed with the intimacy and warmth of ‘Flaws’ to create an album that progresses their sound, leaving them standing far ahead of their contemporaries. This is helped by the work of producer Ben Allen, famous for his work with Animal Collective, giving a new electronic dimension to Bombay Bicycle Club’s sound; though this influence is also due in large part to singer Jack Steadman’s own taste.

This new sound is no more evident than on ‘Shuffle’, starting with a jaunty piano line that explodes into life instantly, rarely letting go of its europhic and uplifting feel. The backing vocals are provided by Lucy Rose, a sharp contrast to the unique voice of Jack Steadman, with her vocals also on the laid-back ‘Lights Out, Words Gone’, the lightest and most carefree song on the album. ‘Your Eyes’ is a jaunty song with a persistent guitar line backed by sporadic woodblocks chirping, with a delicate feel similar to the romantic persuasions of much of ‘Flaws’. 

It is impressive how coherent and neatly the album flows as a whole piece, considering the many different sounds it captures. Opener ‘How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep?’ builds ominously, managing to sound brash with a sharp riff and light at the same time with the gentle crooning Steadman brings, similar to the following ‘Bad Timing’. ‘Beggars’ could have fit succinctly onto ‘Flaws’, beginning with gentle fingerpicking that seems out of place on the album, till a large drum beat kicks in, and the song explodes into life. ‘Still’ is led by a mournful piano, sounding incredibly Radiohead-esque, giving a quiet and emotive ending to the album.

The lyrics are also something of particular charm, as Steadman sings so often about the idiosyncrasies of love and relationships, such as on ‘Your Eyes’ with ‘Nod my head so dumb with love/there's something else I'm dreaming of’. ‘Lights Out, Words Gone’ deals with the promise and allure of night time, and the romanticism that comes from optimism and a night of possibilities, singing ‘When the light is out and words have gone/let me be the one to try it on’. 

‘A Different Kind Of Fix’ works incredibly well, as a pastiche of influences and sounds come together to create a fully formed album that sounds distinctly like the band, yet with a change in sound that plays firmly on their strengths. Yet this album doesn’t feel quite like Bombay Bicycle Club at their peak, but an assured step in that direction, reminding us that they still have much more to offer to music from their position as one of the most promising bands in Britain.

Rating 4.5/5

[shamfrolic-blog]

Shamfrolic @ Proud Camden 07/09/11

We are very pleased to confirm the line up and details of our first night at the Proud Galleries in Camden next Wednesday 7th September, going forward we’ll be bringing you more live acts and DJ sets on the first Wednesday of every month, keep your eyes peeled for news on our other nights in the coming weeks but for now take a look at what our inaugural night has in store and come down and see us!

  Shamfrolic

  www.shamfrolic.co.uk

  Presents…

      Andy Steele

  ‘Night Fishing’ album Showcase

  Featuring members of Echo & The Bunnymen, Turin Breaks, Helen Maher & Hannah Peel

      With support from Telstar and Slides

      Wednesday 7th September 2011

  8pm – 12pm

  £5 before 10pm / £7 after

      PROUD Galleries

  The Horse Hospital

Stables Market

Chalk Farm Road

Camden Town

NW1 8AH

  http://www.proudcamden.com

          Andy Steele

  www.andysteele.co.uk

      On 24th October Talking Elephant will be releasing the stunning progressive folk album ‘Night Fishing’ by Andy Steele. Calling upon an array of talented musicians such as Jez Wing (Echo & The Bunnymen), Hannah Peel (Fiddle), John Bennett & Rob Allum (Turin Breaks), Helen Maher and John Dowling (USA National Banjo Champion) he has created a rich and emotional album of a lost memory of a love story.

      Tonight will be the first opportunity to hear these songs live before the album’s release.

          Telstar

  http://telstarofficial.bandcamp.com

      Jerking rhythms and off kilter melodies Telstar sit somewhere between Foals and Friendly Fires, a sure fire way to get the crowd going.

      Slides

  www.facebook.com/slidesmusic

      Flitting between beautiful acoustic balladry and Ryan Adams meets Band of Horses Alt-Country rock Slides have been a band that have steadily been building up steam amongst those in the know.

      'I've been following Slides for several years now - each song is a gem of understated yearning... Somebody should grab this band by the scruff of the neck and force them to make an album while they're on this kind of form.' - Tom Robinson, BBC 6Music

    In addition, musical interludes will be provided via the disc jockeying of Shamfrolic writers Kris De Souza and Tom Meadowcroft.

[shamfrolic-blog]

In the Grace of Your Love / The Rapture (Adam Lowe)

Five years is a long time in music, especially if you’re away in that time. Imagine if you’re incredibly close to a friend, and their interactions with you slowly declined until there’s nothing but silence from their end – in many ways this is my relationship with The Rapture. After their two previous albums, 2003’s ‘Echoes’ and 2006’s ‘Pieces of the People We Love’, the band drifted from prominence and away into the periphery of my vision, as their quietness seemed to suggest there was not much to come. Just like The Strokes, who had waited five years before releasing ‘Angles’ this year, the long gestation period was a worry for me.

   And just like The Strokes, The Rapture seemed to be struck with the same problem – the realisation their moment may have passed, after capturing it so well previously. The Strokes captured their moment perfectly in 2001 with ‘Is This It’, signalling a boost for guitar music for the decade to come. In 2003, The Rapture burst onto the scene thanks to their post-punk dance sound, created in some part by the ever-popular DFA Records with James Murphy. Songs like ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ and ‘Echoes’ gave indie guitar music a permanent spot on the dance floor, creating a soundtrack for the post-2000 generation. For The Rapture, the main problem was that they’d help create the sound that many bands would follow in, leaving them having to evolve and grow out of the boundaries they’d been put into. ‘Pieces of the People We Love’ kept the core sound of The Rapture, but with a crisper sound than before – in a way, sounding more pop but the problem always remained - where to go next?

  With their new album, ‘In the Grace of Your Love’, it seems The Rapture have gone even more pop. They have still tried to retain some of their core funkier sound, but this album is unabashed, and unashamed, pop. Kicking off the album is the euphoric ‘Sail Away’, a slow building song that explodes into action, seeming more like a finale than a beginning. ‘Blue Bird’ follows on in this vein, an extrovert song laden with reverb, sounding like it could fit neatly on Friendly Fires’ new album.  On ‘Miss You’, lead singer Luke Jenner croons over a subtle groove, yet one that stalks and struts with confidence, managing to feel vulnerable yet with a certain self-assurance still evident.

  There are moments on the album where songs fall flat and feel out of place, making the album lack a flow and feeling of continuity. ‘Roller Coaster’ starts with a Guns N’Roses-like riff, before Jenner monotonously sings ‘Roller coaster, roller coaster, roller coaster, roller coaster ride, yeah, ride’, leaving you wondering whether the person who compiled the album mistakenly put this on the tracklisting, instead of on the ‘Rapture Sings About The Funfair’ album that must be coming out soon. ‘Can You Find A Way?’ is a fast-paced song that lacks dynamism, never growing as a song or bursting into action as you’d hope.

Perhaps the best moments on the album come thanks to The Rapture’s return to DFA, the label that helped launch them. ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’ loops a dance-forcing piano riff throughout the song, similar to LCD Soundsystem’s ‘All My Friends’, growing and growing with a soul-like charm and ending with a full-blown saxophone breakdown over heavy piano and a pounding drumbeat. ‘Come Back To Me’ gives us a pulsating groove, finger clicks and an accordion – a combination odd on paper, but one that works in practice.

  During ‘How Deep Is Your Love?’,  Jenner sings ‘Let me hear that song’, something I’m sure many have said to the band in terms of hearing the song that launched them, and the song that will surely be their legacy – ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’. With ‘In The Grace of Your Love’, The Rapture have attempted to give clarity to themselves as a band, showing that they still have scope to grow, and a lot to offer the current situation of music. The album is one for summer, the kind you’d listen to whilst reclining on a distant beach under the sun – so it’s a shame its release in September will miss its moment. However, although they may have once captured their moment perfectly, this record shows there are still many more moments for them left to capture as a band, and I don’t doubt that they will.

  Rating 4/5

[shamfrolic-blog]

Watch the Throne / Kanye West & Jay Z (Adam Lowe)

Grandiose, extravagant, bombastic – all words that my thesaurus can help me use to describe ‘Watch The Throne’, the new collaborative album from Jay-Z and Kanye West. With two of the biggest rappers of our generation coming together, expectations were always going to be high for what would need to be a grand spectacle, delivering on their past achievements with an album that doubled as a masterpiece and effortlessly progressive at the same time. However, the outcome seemed more like two ageing rappers unable to really push themselves, but sticking to tried and tested methods.

Perhaps I’m expecting too much though. Kanye West, the once protégé of Jay-Z, came out with what can arguably be described as the album of the year (certainly from this writer) with 2010’s ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’, earning critical acclaim from all corners and pushing through his claim as hip-hop’s biggest star, perhaps behind the old master Jay-Z, famous for such masterpieces as Reasonable Doubt and The Black Album. When these two come together you’d expect something akin to a religious experience, but unfortunately Watch The Throne doesn’t quite deliver that.

What it does deliver on though, is an assurance of the talents these rappers do still have. Opener ‘No Church In The Wild’ starts the album off with a menacing beat, with Odd Future’s Frank Ocean adding a hook to the song, as well as on the slow homage to their country on ‘Made in America’. Jay-Z and Kanye West’s lyrical prowess may not be at their best, but they can still conjure brilliant lines such as ‘I made Jesus Walks, so I'm never going to hell’ and ‘Welcome to Havana, smoking Cuban’s with Castro in cabanas’, both from the Otis Redding sampled track ‘Otis’, one of the album’s standout tracks. Other highlights are the La Roux featuring ‘That’s My Bitch’ and the politically-charged ‘Murder to Excellence’, a track against black-on-black violence.

Despite these positives some tracks let the album down, such as final song ‘Why I Love You’, an over the top track which doesn’t seem to fit the album, coming in as a pure pop song. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ is another throwaway track, seemingly trying to introduce morse code into rap, with dull beeps repeating the words ‘SOS’ (probably) over and over again. But when these rappers get it right, they get it oh so right. The track ‘The Joy’, found on special editions of the album, is a track with a subtle groove, proving that you don’t need to be in-your-face to be good. It gently sways along, with a Curtis Mayfield sample, perhaps showcasing the kind of sound Jay and Kanye should have pursued.

One overriding feeling from the album is that the one-time protégé has turned master, with Kanye West easily competing with Jay-Z in terms of skill and talent, and sometimes (but say it quietly) beating him. Kanye’s artistic side and particular style flows through the album, from the cover art to the use of samples, from Otis Redding to Nina Simone. Kanye’s lyrical abilities seem to outweigh those of Jay-Z, as they battle it out for supremacy on each track. Perhaps instead they should have tried to blend, but their distinct styles almost seem to clash at times, making it lack a cohesive style.

Despite many of my criticisms, this album is a great one, but one that would never have been able to survive its own hype. It may not be the masterpiece that some were hoping for, but it does have its moments of brilliance, and you can sense that the two rappers had fun making it. As long as they still enjoy what they do, we can expect much more excellent stuff to come from these two.

Rating 4/5