Friday Video: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Zero'; Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Zero' from It's Blitz (2009)

I don't really listen to that many indie rock bands, on the world scale, although from listening to the radio I'm probably more familiar with them than most other people with my otherwise obscure tastes in music. Of the handful of indie bands that I do end up really liking (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Editors, Foals, Vampire Weekend...) it's usually because there's something in their music that I identify with, punk rock- or (specific) postpunk-wise. Not that they are punk bands, or the second coming of the Clash, or anything like that, but that they're interesting enough that I can spend time with them, absorb their music, as I would with the more solidly punk or hardcore sides of my music collection.

Of course, 'interesting enough' also just means something subjective and quality-wise - as Louis Armstrong said, there are no genres of music inasmuch as they all collapse down to 'good' and 'bad' music.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that this a pretty good video, and sorta punk rock too (you could imagine the Ramones making it). 1980s New York new wave rock at its finest.

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Show Your Bones is my fifth favourite album of 2006 (the order isn't particularly important). I first started listening to it in mid-2007, and bought the LP in early 2008, a week before I got my turntable. The LP has a couple of differences, some might say advantages, from the CD version: it is a track shorter (no 'Deja Vú') and the printed cover (below) is unadorned by text or title. The first is an advantage because, at 12 tracks, the CD drags on a little to long with Show Your Bones's somewhat undifferentiated indie rock; the second because, well, the cover picture is stylishly and strikingly awesome.

As for the music itself, 'Gold Lion' is undeniably the best song on the album, but the rest of the tracks are all pretty great. It's the rhythm and the heaviness to Show Your Bones that makes me like it so much - it's clever and affecting rock'n'roll, energetic indie rock played with both skill and fireworks. Plus, Karen O's often versatile, often unrestrained vocals are probably the best thing to come out of rock music this decade.

sleevage.com/yeah-yeah-yeahs

Hardcore for Nerds: Friday Video [#1] - The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Gold Lion'

Friday Video - Jape, I Was A Man; The Redneck Manifesto - Thirtysixsongs & Cut Your Heart Off From Your Head

Winner of the Choice Music Prize for the best Irish album of 2008, for Ritual. Well deserved, although the bookies should have been giving shorter odds than 6/1. See my Best of 2008: Year End November - featuring 'Phil Lynott'.

www.myspace.com/richiejape

The Redneck Manifesto - 'Cut Your Heart Off...'

Richie Egan, aka Jape, also being the bass player for this fantastic Irish instrumental rock band. This is the double cd version of their first two albums, Thirtysixsongs (2001) and Cut Your Heart Off From Your Head (2002); a new release with new artwork (the above picture is the old version) is now on sale from Road Records for €9.99. If you liked Boxes, you'll probably like this (most of the songs are considerably heavier versions of the track above), and vice versa.

Normal posting to resume soon(ish).

Friday Videos: AD/BC - A Rock Opera

"An outstanding accomplishment in late '70s British religious rock opera, this lavishly produced adaptation of Tim Wynde and Solomon Homerton's 'fringe stage sensation' celebrates the life-affirming story of Christ's nativity as told through the eyes of the Innkeeper (played by Wynde)..."

I was hipped to this in the comments section of the AV Club's Gateways to Geekery: Contemporary British Sitcoms (they suggest starting with Peep Show). I'd never even heard of it before, likely because it only ever aired once, on BBC3 (which is one more BBCs than I have), in 2004, although it was released on DVD in November 2007. Essentially, this is a combination of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, starring as it does Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade of the former, and Julian Barrett (Howard Moon) of the latter, with Noel Fielding (Vince Noir) in a smaller role too. And Matt Lucas (Little Britain) as God.

Sometimes the music is better than the comedy, but that's not too much of a bad thing in such a brilliant pastiche of 70s rock musicals. There are the metafictional conceits of Darkplace along with the bizarre theatrics of the Boosh (though not quite as bizarre) as well as the musical skill obvious in both shows. Plus large parts of the performance remind me of Grails videos, that strange irony/reverence for 70s psychedelia, and cowbell, just with a more obvious(ly) comedic target.

Amazon.co.uk DVD

Friday Video: Grails - Acid Rain DVD Trailer

I got an email today from someone at Temporary Residence Limited about a new video from Grails promoting their new DVD, due out in April. I had been planning on posting the new-ish live videos of Dan Deacon - w/ ensemble - from Pitchfork, but this is probably more useful for me to post. Grails have the whole visual and sonic art combination down quite well (see this post), so their videos are usually a joy to watch. The 'commercial' for Doomsdayer's Holiday was a great idea - though I'd love to see the television channel that interrupted its programming for a Grails video - and this is the same concept, except for a DVD rather than an album:

"Grails - Acid Rain DVD [due out April 7th]

Following up their widely acclaimed and most successful album, Doomsdayer’s Holiday, Grails unleash their first-ever DVD, the career-spanning Acid Rain. Centered around a half dozen mind-altering music videos from their last few albums, Acid Rain also features nearly two hours of live shows from the past several years. Packed full of bonus material and special treats, Acid Rain is as bizarre, eclectic and otherworldly as their albums, with the added spectacle of debaucherous activities, vicarious cult obsessions, and street preachers on rollerskates."

'Acid Rain' happens to be my favourite track from Doomsdayer's Holiday, the epic, surf-drenched and slow-moving finale. It's a good title for a "career-spanning" DVD; as it is a culmination of the varied and progressive post-rock styles of Grails, and also distinctly different from most of the rest of the album. It's impossible to predict where Grails will take their sound next, which is great for a band in an otherwise often repetitive genre.

Since another TRL band, also broadly in the post-rock genre, Envy, produced an excellent DVD - Transfovista - not too long ago, I'm assuming this release will live up to a similarly high standard.

Friday Video: Foals, 'Olympic Airways', post-Skinscore

A nice summery video from Foals, the best popular math-rock band of 2008 and one of my records of the year with Antidotes. The sound seems (intentionally?) muffled at first, but it's a beautifully shot video of one of the most thrilling, trilling quiet-ish songs on the album, and a great display of youth shenanigans. Which brings me to the point that, after their performance of 'Hummer' on the popular TV show Skins which gained them a large and youthful fanbase, they proved to be a tremendously interesting and worthy post-punk band. Antidotes is a crystalline, energetic post-rock album, filled with sweet hooks and a pulsing beat that keeps it going through eleven tracks of desultory experimentation. And no guitar chords.

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Anyway, I'm sooo over Skins... At first, I thought getting rid of all the old characters mightn't be too bad an idea, given that the show isn't Saved By The Bell and youth is a transient phase, but now it seems that the new cast is allowing them to regress the central attitude and vision of the show. Parts of the second series were actually really classy television, and the first season had novelty and daring behind its shock! hedonism! aspects - this season appears to have neither quality.

The trailer looks exciting enough; of course, neither of the two previous elaborately shot sequences was meant to bear more than a figurative resemblance to the events of the series itself. So in this case, it's what the creators of Street Wars would have you believe the average Friday night out in Britain is like. Dubiously aged drinkers in a stereotypical English pub suddenly turn to ransacking the place, beginning with lighting distress flares indoors. The opening sequence of the series - "this day has potential. It's pregnant" - introduces: a cocky skater kid who cheats death and serious traffic accidents; a semi-Chav-like guy who drinks lager in the morning; and a semi-autistic nerd who counts calories. Eventually, Harry Enfield gets nutted in the face. Oh dear.

Nobody expects Skins to be realistic, but we do expect the comedy to have a point. So far, this series seems as aimless as the tabloid idea of drunken teens it was supposed to lampoon. Nevertheless, I'll probably still watch it - the first episode at least - to see if the jokes or the characters get any better.

Series 3 trailer (featuring TV on the Radio, 'Halfway Home')

Episode 1, part 1 (featuring Fucked Up, 'Son the Father')

Sack - Other Voices set

'Sugar Free' & 'Tag'

'Latter Day Saint' & 'Pressures of Modern Life'

Shortly before Channel 6's Nightshift - Ireland's only halfway decent music video show on TV - got shut down by its evil corporate bosses in TV3, I saw for the first time ever the video for Sack's 'Laughter Lines', aka the song that Morrissey said "should be No. 1 forever". Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to see it again anytime soon, because it's not on YouTube - proving a) that good music television is not made completely redundant by the internet (it's not on Muzu.tv either, or (laugh) MTV Music) that b) most things by Sack, one of Ireland's best modern bands, are really hard to find.

So here is Sack's set from (Irish public broadcaster) RTE's Other Voices series in 2006, partially as a two fingers up to TV3 and an illustration of where the license fee actually goes (as opposed to Green Party, government minister for communications, Eamon Ryan's less than fantastic performance in explaining the virtues of public broadcasting against Vincent Browne's disingenuous block-headedness) and also because it's a very good live performance. In fact, it's probably my favourite performance of the several Other Voices series, even ahead of Fight Like Apes.

Self-described as "Frank Sinatra fronting the Pixies", Sack actually fits that description quite well. Crooning vocals revolving around a subtle electro-poppy, shoegaze-y indie sound and, yes, a certain Morrissey/Smiths quality. I wasn't very familiar with the band before seeing their Other Voices performance. 'Sugar Free' starts it off slow and gentle, not even touching the keyboard until three minutes in, and then only to accentuate the gradual curve of the song. 'Tag', by contrast, opens even quieter, yet stronger, with Martin McCann's vocal hook "I've spent this evening, watching you leaving", and from thereon in the song soars ever more upwards. Sack presents a certain sort of combined sonic and visual scenery in their carefully crafted pop. In the background, there is the beautiful musical textures created by the band; and in the foreground, the dramatic gestures of the frontman in his snazzy Suggs-style Fred Perry shirt.

At the time, I was only just getting into keyboards and pop music in general as valid means of artistic expression, something that also went along with discovering Bob Mould's post-Husker Du band Sugar and their first album Copper Blue. It may be an odd association, but it's not one without parallels. Both Mould and McCann are active as DJs in the gay club scene - and both are balding, stocky 30- to 40-something year old men - but what really interests me is the music here and the use of keyboard melodies in guitar-based indie or 'alt-rock' music. There's something about Sack that replicates the expressiveness of Sugar or later Husker Du, when they hit something sweetly poppy yet still obviously alternative.

In the second part, 'Latter Day Saints' is an upbeat, driving, melodic song with a groovy, slightly jazzy - in the showtune kind of way - chorus, "I'm trying hard to be a latter-day saint". The longer, more melancholy 'Pressures of Modern Life' combines instrumental atmosphere - vibrato guitar and keyboard blips and bloops - with the same kind of gentle melody and shoegaze-y drive: "suicide in a college town (ooh-ooh-oooh)". It's an almost defiantly pop sort of song, in its ending lines followed by the last, sugary riffs - "they got him, those demons/they repossessed his soul".

sacktheband.net

You Are What You Eat - b-sides and rarities

Friday Video: Shooting at Unarmed Men on Radio Dingbat

Despite them producing my album of the year, I don't really know all that much about Shooting at Unarmed Men. So this interview from a podcast series site in Australia (where the group is based) is interesting to me at least. The live segments are pretty exciting too:

114: Shooting at Unarmed Men

The angry, spiteful, but undeniably comic music of Jon Chapple’s Shooting At Unarmed Men project is the feature of this weeks episode. Jon discusses the recording of his latest album Triptych, his approach to song writing, the bands numerous line-up changes, and his thoughts on life as a musician post-Mclusky. This interview and performance were filmed at the bands August 11 2007 performance at the Rosemount Hotel.

(RadioDingbat.com)

And that other band that Jon Chapple was in? Here's a little taster of their live performance:

('friends stoning friends', 2001)

Friday Sound and Video - 'Walking in the Air'; late winter schedule

If anybody reading this is an Anglophile, you should love this. If you're British or even Irish, you should already know it (and made up your opinion on it). It is (or at least the first four minutes of it are) the song 'Walking in the Air' from the animated children's film The Snowman:

"'Walking in the Air' is a song written by Howard Blake for the 1982 animated film of Raymond Briggs' 1976 children's book The Snowman. In the film the song was performed by St. Paul's Cathedral choirboy Peter Auty. For the subsequent single release, which reached number five in the UK pop charts, the vocals were sung by Welsh chorister Aled Jones, who became a popular celebrity on the strength of his performance...

The song forms the centrepiece of The Snowman, which has become a seasonal perennial on British television. The story relates the fleeting adventures of a young boy, and a snowman who has come to life. In the second part of the story, the boy and the snowman fly to the North Pole. "Walking in the Air" is the theme for the journey. They attend a party of snowmen, at which the boy is the only human. They meet Father Christmas and his reindeer, and the boy is given a scarf with a snowman pattern."

(Wikipedia)

The story was enchanting for me as a child, though a temperate climate and global warming have meant I've hardly ever experienced a 'White Christmas' (I've experienced snow, of course, just usually in January or February and often only up in the hills). 'Walking in the Air', with all its fantastical beauty and choral grace, is a little bit like 'Silent Night' or other religious Christmas songs, although The Snowman is completely secular: simply a reflection of the domestic, rustic even, non-commercial experience of Christmas,which has itself become part of seasonal popular culture in Britain and beyond.

The song has strong pre-Christmas connotation as well, though, because in Ireland it has been used for years as part of An Post advert for Christmas stamps, which obviously starts showing early in December. Unfortunately that clip (which uses an excerpt of the film) isn't on YouTube, but you can watch the full film, in better quality than the video above, introduced by David Bowie, that king of pop and oddly quaint British culture (see the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (aka 'Senjou no Merii Kurisumasu', aka Furyo). The 'Walking in the Air' song itself is spread between further sections 2 and 3.

In continuance of the spirit of giving, here's a sort-of Christmas song from that dude who played electric viola in the Velvet Underground:

John Cale - 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' from Paris 1919 (1973)

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However, since it is a bit early for all this, be assured that I should have something far more punk rock (and vinyl) to post closer to Christmas. In the meantime, the schedule should also include these following posts:

- Pennywise vs. Fucked Up: Punk Rock 1998-2008 (a follow-up to The Shape of Punk To Come: 2001-2007)

- Lydia Lunch - 'Frankie Teardrop' 10" (same series as the Springsteen/Suicide record I posted back in October)

- Regulator Watts - The Aesthetic of No-Drag and The Mercury CD (continuing, and indeed concluding the major part of, the Alex Dunham guitar-melting part of the Hoover Genealogy Project, after handing over the Fred Erskine/June of 44 side to Time Isn't On My Side)

- Slint - 'Glenn'/'Rhoda' 10" and Mogwai - 'Batcat' 12" (this one's been dragging on for a while, and The Hawk is Howling doesn't seem to be ranking very highly in year-end lists thus far; but - obviously the important thing - I do have some nice photographs of these records. Plus 'Batcat' is still an amazing song)

- Possibly some more end-of-year mixtapes, more genre-specific (e.g. best of punk). However, I'll try and wait for more lists to be put up by other people, so I can get the fullest inspiration, range of inputs, etc.

Friday Sound and Videos - Friday Night Lights and Band of Brothers Themes

Friday Night Lights (movie sequence)

Friday Night Lights (TV show, Season One title sequence)

Band of Brothers (TV show, title sequence)

Explosions in the Sky, 'Your Hand in Mine' (The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, 2003)

Michael Kamen, 'Band of Brothers Theme' (Band of Brothers OST, 2001)

There's nothing like a good TV show, and that's including a good book (by H.G. Bessinger or Stephen E. Ambrose, respectively). Friday Night Lights, the Texan football drama, I've been watching for about a season and a half in total (now watching the latter half of the second season) and although I've neither read the original book nor seen the original movie, they obviously at least laid down a good foundation. Band of Brothers, the account of American 101st Airborne in Europe during the Second World War, I've seen in its entirety several times (even without buying the boxset), and having initially read the book as well; now I'm watching it again - courtesy of the BBC, who apparently felt the need following the 90th anniversary of the First World War armistice to put on a good - the best, really - war series.

What the two shows have in common is probably less than the sum of their obvious differences, but still significant: 1) they are both quintessentially American in focus (even if Band of Brothers had a lot of British actors, such as, of course, Damien Lewis, but also as I just noticed this time around, James McAvoy and Simon Pegg - briefly) and 2) they both have great soundtracks/scores. It is the latter feature which I will discuss here, but there's plenty I could say about the dramatic content of the shows as well. Even more than that, their visual style is great too - the unconventional, fragmented camerawork of Friday Night Lights, or the muted pallete of colours in the Band of Brothers cinematography (although the CGI looks a little dated now).

However, on to the musical themes: fellow Texans, Explosions in the Sky, wrote a lot of the music for the film version of Friday Night Lights, and while the TV show is scored by the well-known composer for television shows W.G. Snuffy Walden (he won an Emmy for his work on The West Wing), a considerable amount of the post-rock sound, to my ear, has been carried over. The title sequence for the TV version of Friday Night Lights has clear echoes of EitS's 'Your Hand in Mine' from the film, but throughout the show there are sections of sweeping, epic, and minor-keyed grandeur (supposedly Explosions in the Sky have been used for some situational music). Given that the show is a strange mix between a serious drama and a soap opera, the inclusion of a style so unconventional in terms of mainstream culture, yet tremendously familiar and expressive to my experience, is curiously effective (and affecting).

Band of Brothers has a similarly epic, but instead quasi-classical, score (composed by Michael Kamen, who died in 2003 and who also collaborated with Pink Floyd on The Wall). It too has contradictions: between stirring patriotism and harsh, even pessimistic realism, between the celebration of solidarity and mourning for individual tragedy, and between the confidence of democracy and the nihilism of war. A lot of these tensions are expressed in the theme, which navigates a sound neither jingoistic nor cynical, but instead somehow powerfully human.

The somewhat predictable strings are present, but do not totally predominate, and are matched by the choral, almost transcendent, element. The underlying melody, varied but insistently memorable, has a certain hymnal quality to it for me (memories of a secular Protestant culture experienced in childhood, in which church was a social and artistic as well as a religious event - and I guess the intent is equally to produce a 1940s, solidarist 'one nation under god' American feel). The soundtrack (pw - sharedmusic.net) has a set of two 'suites', expanded versions of the theme long beyond the two or three minutes of the title sequence - a fascinating exploration of the condensed television piece.

Friday Video: Special Liberal Media Edition - Gore Vidal vs. David Dimbleby

DD - "What kind of an eruption are you talking about?"

GV - "Well... may I talk the facts of life to you? The BBC audience I know very well, and they like the facts of life..."

From the BBC election coverage on Tuesday night, I think shortly after the overall result was officially called by the networks - they didn't show a clock on screen, just like a Las Vegas casino. David Dimbleby is a well-known television presenter for the BBC, while Gore Vidal is a somewhat longer-established cultural landmark of US literature. So it's quite funny when Vidal says "well, I don't know anything about you", and also with everything else he says. But there's plenty of serious talk in it too.

This was the best election coverage available to me (the competition being RTE, which was quite good, and Sky News and CNN, which were not so much). Not sure if there's anything good on YouTube of Simon Schama vs. John Bolton, or John Bolton vs. the BBC reporter in Phoenix (you display "a fundamental ignorance of the Republican Party" - Bolton said that, not her).

After they pack it in with Gore Vidal here in this clip there's a minute or so of analysis with one of the pundits - the one with the moustache - who's name I've forgotten, but earlier in the coverage he described a historic bias in exit polls, in favour of Democrats, as due to Republicans "being more suspicious of the news media". Sad - and scary - if true. Because it can really be rather entertaining.

Friday Video: Mogwai - 'Batcat'

Apparently tonight is some sort of pseudo-pagan festival, so here's a scary video for you.

Okay, it's not really that scary (this video "made out of an old 70's music video with a Danish dude doing a cover of Apache by The Shadows" for 'The Sun Smells Too Loud' is probably more unsettling) but it's a great song, and the video with its camp horror is pretty good too. Initially, I didn't think so, chiefly because I came in around the 2:00-minute mark and children dressed in folk clothing running around a forest to heavy guitars somehow reminds me of a lot of nu-metal and 'post-hardcore' videos from the early-to-mid 00s. Plus, as I had already discovered 'Batcat' as the awesome instrumental post-rock/metal track that it is, I didn't feel like it needed visual exposition. There's a self-contained quality to the music - like that of Slint - that fills up your headphones with sound that is both curiously mechanical and organic.

However, the video has plenty of technical and aesthetic merit to it, creating a gloomy environment (aesthetic, but perhaps not very creative), and the glistening, visceral image of the 'batcat' at the end is quite impressive. Having seen the full thing, the opening shot of the girl's hooded face, with a very painterly effect, is brilliant - as is the foreshadowing juxtaposition of the visceral, sci-fi cliche of pulsating, inhuman flesh. Man, this rocks!

More on this (and Slint) later:

Friday Video - Tom Waits, 'Way Down in the Hole'

This clip is from Tom Waits's Big Time, "part concert movie, part play, with elements taken from the Franks Wild Years [which originally featured 'Way Down in the Hole'] play". I don't know if you could find a better way to the present this song (other than perhaps the context below), it's just so physical, dramatic and searingly bluesy. Or jazz-rock, whatever way you want to express it. You can certainly see why they chose this song for the Wire.

As I've mentioned previously, Tom Waits and Nick Cave are both artists which I really like but have never really felt the need to stretch my collection of their work beyond one or two albums. I'm not sure whether that's because I don't think there's enough variety in their work (assuredly untrue, and the standard comment of anyone who doesn't understand any artist) or whether I'm perplexed as to which albums to move onto (no doubt people could give me plenty of suggestions), or maybe it's because I really just can be happy with Blood Money, a bit of Swordfishtrombones, and the opening sequence of every episode of the Wire -

(this is the title sequence from the second season of the Wire - now showing in Ireland on Channel 6, Thursdays at 9.35 - which is the season that features the original Waits version rather than a cover.)

Grails - Sound and Videos

(NSFW? It is Friday, though...)

Grails - 'Take Refuge', from Take Refuge In Clean Living, Important Records 2008. Click to stream (it's a long song, so give it time to buffer).

And play it fucking loud!

These are three albums well worth owning. They are Grails' latest recordings, from last year's Burning Off Impurities, the shorter Take Refuge In Clean Living from earlier this year, to the new album Doomsdayers' Holiday due for release next month. I wrote a good deal about Take Refuge in the second part of my August/Best of 2008 series, and I think that the track of the same name may be the best single thing they've written yet.

Before this soon-to-be trio of albums, was an intermediary stage of more experimental work resulting in Interpretations of Three Psychedelic Rock Songs From Around the World (Southern Records, 2005) and Black Tar Prophecies Vol. 1, 2 & 3 (Important Records, 2006) building on their first two albums of more string-based, traditional work, Redlight and The Burden of Hope (2004 and 2003 respectively) released on Neurot Recordings, the label founded by members of the experimental metal band Neurosis.

Grails are entirely an instrumental rock band, with a sound that has swung between clean post-rock (Burden of Hope, Redlight, and a lot of Burning Off Impurities) and a much heavier, distorted 'metal' sound (Black Tar, Take Refuge). Whether it is soft or loud, however, it has been absorbing increasing amounts of Eastern and psychedelic influences. They are a sort of throwback band to the melding of Eastern melodies and Western guitar rock of the 60s, but also as vast and as intense as any modern post-rock band from which they take a lot of their contemporary context. I've said that, in my opinion, Grails might be the best post-rock band around at the moment, although I do recognise that's rather a large claim to make. Mogwai, for example, are coming out with a very solid album The Hawk Is Howling about now, on top of the impressively Slinty Batcat EP, so it's their crown to lose I suppose. Which brings us neatly to Grails promising new album:

Doomsdayer's Holiday is available for pre-order from Temporary Residence Limited now (CD or 180 gram LP), and comes out on the 7th of October. There are two unique covers, the one shown above and a more demure one, so TRL are also offering a complete set with both versions of the LP and a free CD thrown in as well. If that's the kind of thing you're into.

The Grails Myspace has two songs from the album, 'Reincarnation Blues' and 'Predestination Blues' (obviously, they're going from Buddhism to Calvinism).

grailsongs.com

Videos:

There are two sets here, one of music videos/visuals and one of live performances (all but the last come from grailsongs.com.) The visuals show the blend of influences that make up Grails, from Eastern culture to the Western adaptation of that culture - fragments of old martial arts films, shots of Asian architecture - and in the case of of 'Take Refuge', ancient Greek civilisation. The live performances (both of the stand-out song from Burning Off Impurities, 'Silk Rd.', a name referring to, historically, the very link between East and West) show just how heavy the band are. Post-rock in the form of, say, Slint, is a movement which came out of hardcore - a fact which can be sublimated on record, but becomes more apparent when the music is flexed out in a live context.

'Take Refuge' (from Take Refuge In Clean Living)

'More Extinction' (from Burning Off Impurities)

'Silk Rd.' (from Burning Off Impurities) - live performance

'Silk Rd.' live @ the Bowery Ballroom - recorded by Blend77.

"Grails are not new-age. They are incredible-age."

Friday Videos: Punk/Not Punk

Haven't done one of these for a while, so I thought I'd start it up again. This is a game we all like to play, of course:

Punk:

Dennis Kucinich's 'Wake Up America' speech at the Democratic National Convention

I feel slightly uncomfortable butting in on US politics, but speaking as a global citizen, the prospect of John McCain taking on the role of policing the world for four years fills me with dread; and for all of you under a Republican administration who don't want to be under one, you have my sincerest sympathies.

What's impressive about this video is not just the truths being said in it; but the fact that they are, and the way that they are, being said. This probably doesn't fully match up with Obama's 'leading from the center', but it still needs to be there. Most of you probably don't really know who Dennis Kucinich is, and neither do I all that much, but suffice to say he's a bit of a maverick in the Democratic Party (and erstwhile candidate for the nomination).

(Credit to the bloggers over at Organizing Grievances, and also to *#..(brad who posted another link in the comments for the Refused post)

Not Punk:

Crimescene's 'Outcasts', one of the very worst music videos I've ever seen

I'm not much in the business of being negative about bands, not even in my own head (I'm, like, way too Zen for that.) However, this is just some hilariously bad shit. It's not quite as magical as when I first saw it, which only proves that if this was in any way intended as a joke, the novelty will start to wear off. Otherwise, this is just a sad, sad example of how wrong a good genre of music can go (admittedly after a rather lengthy, ahem, creative journey). I first saw this somewhere after my weaning off of Pennywise (an actually rather good surf-rock/political hardcore band a lot of the time) and onto bands like Hot Water Music and Fugazi, and before discovering truly obscure genres of hardcore. Hence I thought of this when compiling my Shape of Punk list below, as a sort of unbidden antithesis in almost every way, shape or form.

My apologies.

May Live Mixtape (no live tracks) + Friday Videos

So, over the last while I've been at a fair few cool gigs. Nothing too strenuous, really, compared to other people: I got in the two big acts I wanted to see (Battles & Dinosaur Jr.); two smaller but very interesting shows (Xiu Xiu and Ham Sandwich), as well as a local act which I didn't write up (Heathers, with Hooray for Humans); and I didn't go to any of Bruce Springsteen's three nights in the RDS - although, as it happened, I had to sit on a bus and watch the hordes go in and out for two of those times.

This short mixtape or playlist divides up neatly into the first side of international (i.e. American) acts and the second side of Irish bands. It's all merged into two mp3s, no individual downloads sorry. I've included start times of each song to help, however.

(Apologies for the short post beforehand - some kind of server problems and a nice sunny evening outside)

MIXTAPE

Download May/Oh Five Oh Eight

Side A: (15:51)

1. Dinosaur Jr. - 'Freak Scene' (vinyl rip) (00:00-)

2. Battles - 'Tonto' (03:33-)

3. Xiu Xiu - 'Apistat Commander' (11:16-)

Side B: (16:34)

4. Hooray for Humans - 'Already Sleeping' (00:00-)

5. Heathers - 'Remember When' (03:30-)

6. A Lazarus Soul - 'The Day I Disappeared' (05:44-)

7. Ham Sandwich - 'Words'(10:17-)

8. The Vinny Club - 'It's Not You It's Of' (14:06-)

The first side is fairly straightforward; basically, the best song or near enough from each gig, as recorded from the album. I put in the vinyl rip of 'Freak Scene' from Bug well, because I could - same reason I put a vinyl rip of Slint, 'Good Morning, Captain' into a previous mix - but also out of technical interest. I'm not one to make a big deal out of the supposed differences in sound between vinyl and CD, but there is a difference between them here (It's a bit like someone talking normally and someone going 'BLEH!' in your ear). So this isn't as loud, but you can turn it up yourself.

The second side deserves a bit more explanation, on account of these all being Irish bands. Hooray for Humans I wrote about previously - this is the title track from their amazing new 7" out on Hideaway Records. They were playing support last Friday in Eamonn Doran's for Heathers and their album launch.

Heathers are two girls and a guitar - incidentally, from my old secondary school in Dublin -who literally are releasing an album and going on a US tour on the eve of their graduation. Here, Not There is a joint release between Plan-It-X Records of Gainesville, FL and Hideaway Records of, er, Deansgrange, Dublin. 'Remember When' is the first song off the album, which is really very good.

A Lazarus Soul played the Village the following night as support for Ham Sandwich, the show which is reviewed here. They were perhaps a little underwhelming, but this is the way they're meant to sound. 'The Day I Disappeared' is a song about notorious Dublin gangland criminal, Martin 'The General' Cahill, taken from their excellent album Graveyard of Burnt Out Cars.

Then Ham Sandwich, and 'Words', because it's my favourite live song of theirs. I could perhaps have put 'Never Talk' in instead, since that was the reason for the gig, but a) there didn't seem to be an opportunity to buy the single and b) I have something else up my sleeve regarding Ham Sandwich singles.

Finally, a sort of random but really good track from The Vinny Club, a side project from Vinny McCreith of Dublin band (sort of in the same league as Fight Like Apes) Adebisi Shank. The album launch for Rocky IV Reckyrd is tonight (the 31st), and I was planning on getting in one last gig in for May but I don't think I'll be able to go. However, it's a banging tune (taken from the Indie Hour podcast).

VIDEOS

The Redneck Manifesto (support act for Battles) - 'No One Plans Eleven' from a previous date in Vicar Street, recorded by Foetal Media

Xiu Xiu - 'FTW' from their new album, Women As Lovers

Heathers - 'Margie' (Irish and English), Live @ Eamonn Doran's, 23/05/08.

Ham Sandwich - 'Words', Live @ HMV instore

Friday Video: Fight Like Apes, 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues'

via unarocks.blogspot.com

This is from their gig with Future of the Left last month. 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues' is, of course, a well-known Mclusky song. The video is quite professional, and although the sound is a little raw that's the way it's meant to be. Enjoy!

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas

Fight Like Apes - Jake Summers

Friday Video: The Undertones, 'Teenage Kicks'

(click the picture below to see full size)

I don't think I need to do much introducing for this song; seminal pop-punk track, a piece of music that launched the Derry band's career in late 1970s UK and Ireland; and the culmination of an influence that began with the 1976 release of the Ramones' self-titled debut and the formation of the Sex Pistols.

It's also well-known as legendary BBC DJ John Peel's favourite song, hence the graffiti piece above (spotted on a Belfast flyover, from this blogger via Wikipedia). If, by some bizarre chance, it's not well known enough for you, here's a few links:

Teenage Kicks on Wikipedia

Guardian interview with John Peel, 2001 (1)

Guardian interview with John Peel, 2001 (2)

Watch out for the s/t album on the blog sometime soon, as well as perhaps something from the Listening In: The Undertones Radio Sessions 1978-1982 which I picked up second-hand recently.

As part of the series of very best Irish albums I started back on Paddy's Day. 'Teenage Kicks' isn't an album, but if it was it would have to be #1. Sorry, Loveless.

New Vinyl Photography and Friday Videos: Crystal Castles, Fight Like Apes, Foals & Radiohead; Skins & SXSW

(Click to enlarge - and to test your knowledge of Dischord/No Idea/etc release numbers!)

First of all, hope you like the new header (above, top). I'd been thinking of changing it for some time, especially since the mp3 player in the original (and the headphone cable, but not the headphones) had given up on me. You might recognise the current picture from the Double Slowcore Post; it's a record stylus in action, shot from a slightly odd angle. It fits the slightly different direction this blog has been going in lately.

The picture immediately above - the sum total of my LPs as of 04/04 - is the genesis for a third header. I might come up with one or two more, and maybe rotate them on a weekly basis...

However, no vinyl is involved in this post; it's all hip, up-and-coming indie-ish bands, shown mostly through the medium of low- and medium-quality video:

Crystal Castles on Skins:

I've heard a good deal of buzz about this band, particularly surrounding their outing at this year's SXSW. Apparently the singer was flailing around the stage only days after she had a few ribs bruised (or cracked, I can't remember) in a car accident. I haven't heard much, but I like their sound and I'm encouraged to seek out more; kind of like a collision between the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O and the loopy beats of Dan Deacon (oh, but I've used that comparison before - see below) with a good dollop of Suicide thrown in. Here's their appearance in a scene from Skin, "the new-rave OC" according to UnaRocks". Pretty rockin':

Fight Like Apes at SXSW:

Yep, back to being parochial again. This excellent Dublin band first garnered my - quite shallow - Dan Deacon/Yeah Yeah Yeahs comparison (prologue to Fuck This Band: Mclusky Singles) and fit more generically somewhere between "obnoxious pop" and punk. I haven't heard much about their trip to SXSW, but a few Irish journalists who went said they put on a very good show - for documentary evidence, here's a couple of videos from YouTube (also found via UnaRocks). Fairly decent sound quality, too. I'll be seeing them for just the third time when they hit the UCD Student Bar this coming week, and then hopefully for a fourth when they play the Village with Future of the Left next Sunday:

Foals - 'Hummer', Skins Secret Party Episode:

A video I've been meaning to post for a while, in particular following this post on 'Cassius'. The scene comes from a special mini-episode of Skins which was broadcast shortly before the start of the second season. Basically, the group find a small abandoned mansion in a forest and put on an impromptu rave with, er, Foals providing the music. Mucho hedonism.

You can watch the full 10-minute episode on YouTube here.

Holy Fuck - Radiohead 'Nude' Remix:

Finally, the song used for the recent Skins trailer, Radiohead's 'Nude', has been offered for remix for the band (BBC story). I came across - via Thrill Pier - a Holy Fuck remix today, which sounds pretty good - you can download it from Fileden here. This is the original trailer which I posted previously:

Friday Video - Foals, 'Cassius' + vinyl rip

I got Q and not U's No Kill Beep Beep LP in the mail* yesterday. Why that's relevant is because a) that album is awesome and b) it's my gold - well, okay, yellow - standard for quirky indie math-rock. Currently, Foals meet that standard; or at least, match up well against it.

The first time I saw or heard anything by this band was the video for 'Hummer' on David's not-updated-in-a-while blog, The Fate of the Human Carbine. Foals are a UK band, from Oxford specifically. Anyway, 'Hummer', while a decent enough song, left me thinking that they were not much more than a derivative, Q and not U style math-rock** band.

However, 'Cassius' is a far more impressive song, and over successive listens quickly forced me to re-evaluate my opinion of Foals. It's always nice when that happens, that you have to admit being wrong but also that you find a band you really like - at least in part.

Their other singles, 'Mathletics' (surprise, surprise) and 'Balloons' are quite good, with the video for 'Mathletics' in particular being well worth a viewing. And 'Hummer' was performed rather brilliantly on Skins, so Foals went even further up in my estimation, even if I don't think it's the most creative of their songs.

Their album, Antidotes, was released last week (on Sub Pop, in the States) and has been getting pretty good reviews. I've yet to hear it - and [as of time of writing] I've yet to pick up the 7" for this single, a stack of which are hiding behind some more current releases in HMV - but I'd say it'll be worth checking out. The press has been making a big deal out of the fact that they've left 'Mathletics and 'Hummer' off the record, like it's some big artistic statement. Personally I think it reflects in part that 'Cassius' and 'Balloons' are the stronger songs, but also that while singles are good for albums - like Ham Sandwich's Carry the Meek, which is entirely taken up with singles for its first five tracks - albums have to stand on their own as well.

Here's the video for 'Cassius'. I guess I should mention it has a saxophone and trumpet in it. It's not a central part of the song, but they do give some great colour to the mathy sound and there's a terrific free-jazz part at the end of the song. Happy body-popping!

* post. Blogging plays hell with your Hiberno-English.

** or more accurately, 'dance-punk', but that's a shit name. Battles = math-rock. Q and not U = math-rock. Battles ≠ Q and not U. [but Foals = Battles + Q and not U!] Such are the problems of life.

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Foals - Cassius (7" #2), 2008