A New Band A Day! » actual brilliance

Wild Nothing; Lush and Swoon, You Know You Got Soul

Joe Sparrow — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:15:24 +0000

So, 17 years later, they’re still here, the Rolling Stones of dance – a tag with all the same associations of cred-yo-yo-ing, borderline ridiculousness and begrudging likeability.

And having long ago abandoned breakbeat thrills, The Chemical Brothers are now producing epic, fine-tuned songs like Swoon.

Swoon sounds remarkably like Orbital’s Lush 3.1. This is almost certainly deliberate, and frankly, is to be applauded – and yet it’s also their undoing. Listen to the two back-to-back – and, emerging from a nagging, submerged state, the flaw in the Chem’s shtick becomes apparent. There’s no – yikes! – soul.

Orbital’s music seems so much more human, organic, pliable. Compared to Lush – and, remember, it wants to be – Swoon is robotic, clinical. A floor-filler for car production lines.

Claiming a band has ‘soul’ leaves me feeling a little icky, and yet I’m about to apply that assessment to a second band in as many minutes. Urgh. But listen, and you’ll here it in Wild Nothing‘s gorgeous Cloudbusting, pulsing, alive, awake:

Wild Nothing // Cloudbusting

Te softer-than-snow sound: now that’s Lush, too, in every sense. Layered, creamy, sweet and light – this song is the the perfect pudding. You’d lick the bowl clean.

If this is dream-pop, then I envy the man whose dreams are all as beautiful as this. Gorgeous.

www.myspace.com/wildnothing

Mariee Sioux – Cultured, Not European, Brilliant

Joe Sparrow — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:53:05 +0000

Although usually far from a model of organisation and understanding, as far as today’s new band is concerned, I managed to outdo myself this time.

Having had Mariee Sioux earmarked for some time as a truly great new artist – one who had exerted a frisson of earthy excitement from the moment her ethereal voice melted into my willing ears – I duly and carefully noted, then noted again, that she was playing at Manchester’s Eurocultured street festival on the May Bank Holiday.

So, having made such careful arrangements not to miss this brilliant talent under any circumstances whatsoever, naturally the moment I remembered about her appearance was in a vaguely coherent forehead-slapping moment at two in the morning of the following day.

Ignoring the fact that being an American singer is a minor and confusing inconvenience when appearing on the bill of an all-European showcase festival, missing Mariee Sioux has been a genuinely painful experience, as this woman has a voice of wild heather honey and songs streamed straight from the subconscious of a minor deity.

Mariee Sioux // Loveskulls

A song that feels like a deep, strong, unyielding hug of love, with a power zapped straight from the Earth’s life force itself, Loveskulls must be heard so that you too can be dragged, trance-like, into a blissful state by its green, lush charm.

Loveskulls is so light, it may be fuelled by warm summer winds alone; so wholesome and rich that packs of wild animals may well have been raised on the song’s milky beauty; a salve for the soul.

Who is Mariee Sioux? Where did she come from? How did these beautiful songs get here? Thanks partly to my wholehearted idiocy, we may never know. And yet such questions are unimportant when a voice so stubbornly otherworldly, and yet wholly of this planet, sweeps you up and wafts you away. A genuine treat.

www.myspace.com/marieesioux

Young British Artists; Breathless Praise Thereof

Joe Sparrow — Mon, 17 May 2010 10:19:30 +0000

Perhaps it’s the dizzying depth of the new bands sprouting in the Manchester music scene at the moment, or perhaps it’s sheer, dumb, laziness on my part.

Admittedly, the latter is the most likely, though there are just so many fascinating bands in and around Manchester now, that you, and I, would be forgiven for assuming the former as most probable.

Either way, I ought to have covered Young British Artists months ago. I didn’t though, so today am making amends by way of a breathlessly enthusiastic slew of praise-slurry.

It’s simple: listen to Lived In Skin, and tell me that it isn’t as exciting and – yikes – fresh sounding a song as you’ve heard for a long time.

Young British Artists // Lived In Skin

Maybe it’s the driving, relentless drums, or maybe it’s the swirl of – urgh – intellect that surrounds the song. I think that it’s that the band sound like they know what they’re doing, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there. You don’t need to know those details – just feel the confidence, the desire, the plan.

Young British Artists shoot pinholes of laser-light through the fug, and deliver songs more taught, more deliberately designed and more attack-minded than the majority of their contemporaries. Jolts of pleasure, life, and bright, white light. Excellent.

www.myspace.com/youngbritishartists

Photograph by Sanna Berger

Takeda; When Bad Recommendations Go Good, Part Two

Joe Sparrow — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:07:23 +0000

When Bad Recommendations Go Good, Part Two. (See yesterday’s adventures for Part One)

When Takeda were pitched to me, I had little hope. Vague mutterings about a world-folk ‘outfit’ who were ‘getting attention in Norfolk’ just didn’t reach up my trouser leg and grab me by the balls, in all honesty.

Within this article, then, lie lessons on the benefits of ignorance, bloody-mindedness and the value of another weary click of another speculative URL. Because – and listen carefully – if A Million Years isn’t the most damn beautiful song I’ve heard for weeks – months even – I’m a banana.

Why explain any more? Listen:

Takeda // A Million Years

There’s no point in wondering where this song came from, or how it came to be, or even what sparked its existence. Just be pleased this song is here, and gratefully allow its downy softness to slowly envelop your body.

There are times when the weight of the world just seems too much, and times when finding comfort is impossible. This song can’t help you with that.

But when that weight is lifted, and when you experience the honey-sweet lightness of relief, the sound you hear in your head will either be a soft, delicious wash of tinnitus-white noise, or it will be a song as beautiful, orange and warm as A Million Years. Hopefully it will be this exact song.

Life is strange. Orson Welles touched greatness and then never recovered. Joseph Heller stumbled over a baby-sized gold nugget first time. Takeda might never reach these heights again, but who cares? This song is the sound of them standing at the top of the mountain; panting, happy, dizzy.

www.myspace.com/takeda

The Horn The Hunt, Sardines and Polymaths

Joe Sparrow — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:25:13 +0000

I saw Caribou last night in Manchester. The fact that I saw him at all was a minor triumph of extended haggling with the doorstaff, because the venue was packed sardine-tight with the usual array of haircuts, too-cool-for-schoolers and louts that populate ‘buzz’ gigs.

Still, it was worth it: ANBAD alumni Gold Panda was supporting, noisily, and the audience was mesmerised by both his heavy, muddy beats and his woolly panda-hat.

Caribou themselves were delicious – swirling and deft tunes with, alternately, dreamy, delicate punctuations and squelchy, heavy, house synth noises.

Songs were built, looped, dropped and reassembled with consummate skill. Ringleader Dan Snaith played, variably, guitars, drums, keyboards and percussion – a true musical polymath.

The Horn The Hunt maintain a similar approach in their dexterous, and yet pleasingly raw, songs. The songs, you feel, are constructed carefully, and then allowed to crumble around the edges. The result is gloriously sinewy, overblown songs like The Valley.

The Horn The Hunt // The Valley

Overblown but restrained, The Valley satisfies the listener in all manner of ways. Rumbustious and tactile, clanking and delicate; there are sounds here that evoke all manner of feelings – some troubling, some warm, some white-light-bright.

The Horn The Hunt crystallise the mania of the creative process into one shimmering, glittering moment of brilliance. Excellent.

www.myspace.com/thehornthehunt

Friendly Foliage; Donkey-Bestiality and Tenuous Links

Joe Sparrow — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:15:51 +0000

Sometimes a crock of comedy gold just falls into your lap.

Sometimes it is a hairy, confusing crock. For instance: the news story of a man who has been sneaking into a farm and having sex with a horse and a donkey.

I don’t know at which point buggering a donkey just doesn’t cut it any more and the step up to having sex with a horse is the only remaining option, but this man passed it with brazen certainty.

Regardless – a man having sex with animals isn’t funny, right? No – but the funny thing is the penultimate paragraph in the resultant local newspaper article:

“The defendant does not have a stable address…”

Wonderful. Someone buy that sub-editor a pint, quick.

So the link to today’s new band? Well, Friendly Foliage could well have been used by said donkey-buggering gent to gain the gentle beasts’ trust. And that, dear reader is the most tenuous of all the many tenuous links that have graced the pages of ANBAD.

Friendly Foliage // Masonic Meadows

Masonic Meadows is exactly the kind of drop-dead gorgeous, burblingly beautiful song that I would happily have soundtracking every move of my life from here onwards.

This kind of music – that is, the sort that meanders, grows and organically weedles its way into your head – is rare. Anyone can make drawn-out, self-indulgent soundscapes (just visit any modern art gallery).

But to create something that glistens with dewy, sun-drenched beauty is outrageously difficult; and yet Friendly Foliage have done just that. Masonic Meadows is truly wonderful: calm, earthy, real. From donkey-rape to this. Yum.

www.myspace.com/friendlyfoliage

Song issued under CC license (BY-NC-SA) via Bad Panda.

Bermuda Bonnie; and Piña Coladas, Elvis Impersonators

Joe Sparrow — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:31:53 +0000

It’s rare to find a band that manages to wholly inhabit a different plane to the majority, and even rarer to find one that makes music in that place that’s palatable. Bermuda Bonnie has hula-hooped past these markers with flying colours.

Stepping into Bermuda Bonnie‘s world is to open the door of a musty pop charity-shop, a bewildered plunge into retirement-home kitsch. Normal rules do not apply here.

After ten minutes of listening to songs like Houseboat, an evening of piña coladas, Elvis impersonators and leafing through well-thumbed copies of National Geographic sounds just peachy.

Bermuda Bonnie // Houseboat

If we could listen to the reminiscent dreams of an old lady with senile dementia, we’d hear these lingering, pristine moments of life suddenly bubbling to the surface.

Or they could be the wild, naive dreams of a seven year-old. Such are the inherent quandaries of Bermuda Bonnie‘s songs. These thoughts are cute, longing, lusty and, in a way, as deeply sad as they are intensely happy.

You could be fooled into thinking that Bermuda Bonnie‘s songs are simply an exercise in retro-indulgence. You couldn’t be much further from the truth. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

www.myspace.com/bermudabonnie

Evan Voytas, and A Scenester-Baiting Jibe At The XX

Joe Sparrow — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:06:22 +0000

Comparing one band with another is a mindless, but pretty much necessary, evil.

As a hack keyboard-basher, I try to avoid it as much as I can, but sometimes you’re left with no other option: how else to describe bande du jour The XX as anything other than ‘drab Zero Seven copyists‘?*

So when I heard Evan Voytas described as ‘the American M83′ by both those who have read his PR company’s press release and those who haven’t, my interest was piqued and repulsed at the same time. This is usually a good sign.

The ingredients are there in the song title alone – vaguely mystical, quasi-pastiche, the whiff of uncool: it’s all there in “I Run With You, Spirit Animal”.

Evan Voytas // I Run With You, Spirit Animal

More importantly though, the song is a stormer. It sounds cheap – by which I mean it is the delicious sound of a young man who has time, talent and no external monetary influences.

Yes, there’s a hint of M83 in there, but any music maker with any sense will have looped their copy of Saturdays = Youth until there was no possibility of the dreamy lusciousness not appearing in their own songs.

Evan Voytas has made songs that are all-revealing, all-enveloping and altogether sharper, and more direct, than a thousand other sonic scrabblers. Or The XX. Wonderful.

www.myspace.com/evanvoytas

*Note: this may or may not be a joke

Photography by Shayne Eastin

Wu Lyf (Finally) and The Great BBC 6Music Sham

Joe Sparrow — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:09:37 +0000

I knew something didn’t add up. The BBC 6Music kerfuffle drags on and on – with more and more music fans, politicians and BBC bigwigs all competing to see who can yelp their opinions the loudest.

And yet, all along, something just didn’t seem right. How could the BBC continue to make slack-jawed idiot-vision programmes like I Believe In Ghosts: Joe Swash and Hotter Than My Daughter, whilst cutting 6Music because of budgetary constraints?

The truth is now pretty much out: the BBC has been toying with 6Music’s fate as part of some tedious, wider, political machination. Now, bear with me here – we’re not in tin-foil-hat-donning Conspiracy Theory territory yet – but think: is the following scenario that implausible?

BBC are pressured by politicians and papers alike for spending license-payer money poorly on ‘underused services’;
Under the auspices of cost-cutting, the BBC axes services with ‘low’ audiences (but high listener devotion);
Audiences froth in concerned frenzy, papers and politicians champion spontaneous public protest;
BBC points out to critics that the ‘wasted’ money is actually providing a much-desired service;
6Music reinstated, criticism silenced until after forthcoming general election;
BBC directors smoke fatCuban cigars on yacht full of Page 3 girls in Mediterranean.

Well, I think it’s possible. We shall see.

Meanwhile, while vague theories abound, how about Wu Lyf? Now here’s a Mancunian band who have released so little information about who they are and what they do that I’m not honestly sure if the image and mp3 attached to this article is anything to do with them or not.

Wu Lyf // Heavy Pop

There are many theories floating around Manchester about Wu Lyf: that each time they play their gigs, they change their name to put people off the scent; that one day they will burst forth and reveal themselves with a #1 album; that they’re an extravagant scam; that they’re the future of music itself.

I ought to have written about Wu Lyf about 6 months ago when I first fell over them, and have been holding off to try and catch them live. I have repeatedly failed at this.

However, in the rarefied environs of the music blogging world, where blogs identify themselves by madly scrambling to be the first to feature new band X, an exeption can be made for Wu Lyf.

No-one knows much about them, so I feel justified in being so far behind the curve. Notice that this ‘review’ contains no actual review of Wu Lyf. I think they’d like it that way.

Broken Deer, Bypassing Rationale and Zipping Straight To Your Middle Of Nowhere

Joe Sparrow — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:17:08 +0000

We all have our curious nooks, fascination with niches, our inexplicable preferences and the feeling of being unfathomably drawn to subject X over subject Y.

So I’ll come right out and admit it, using a truly tortuous metaphor: if Broken Deer was a magnet, I’d be the spilt iron filings bristling all over it, irremovable, fascinated and twitching.

Broken Deer‘s music bypasses both the rational lobe of the brain and the musical one, and connects directly with the bit that makes me recoil with satisfaction, pleasure and a beguiling, bizarre sense of comfort.

Broken Deer // White Woman

Found sounds pulled from dusty locked drawers, voices from the misty ether, warm radio crackle from the other side of the world. Broken Deer channels all those feelings of wide-eyed intrigue into a tangible reality, and then smashes them back into a thousand little fragments.

Broken Deer is actually a person called Lindsay Dobbin. But forget that name. Disassociate the sounds with humanity, and you’ll begin to wonder if you’ve tapped into the tentative recordings of an alien who has has learnt about music via radio waves from Earth’s past which are only just arriving in their present.

Deft, careful, delicate, delicious: Broken Deer.