Mclusky Singles - Pt. II

(Go here for the original post)

I

Two bands represent the best of Irish music for me at the moment - Fight Like Apes and Ham Sandwich - and I really like them both, but if I had to make the choice I'd have to go with Fight Like Apes because:

1) they are from Dublin and

2) they like Mclusky

Good news, then, that Fight Like Apes are coming back from their UK tour (before heading off to Seattle to record their first album) to do a short Irish circuit which will finish up with a gig in the Village with Future of the Left, on April 13th. Result!

In the meantime, head over to Clocked In - Punched Out for this post and cool video on Future of the Left (2/3rds of Mclusky).

II

Mclusky - There Ain't No Fool in Ferguson/1956 And All That

www.emusic.com/10799841

"A welcome return to Mclusky with a slice of deranged, inventive and skewered punk.

A stopgap release prior to their third album, said to be due out in September, this double a-side finds Mclusky in top form. Produced in Monnow Valley by Richard Jackson, its a slight progression from their usual jagged punk territory, but with all the best elements still in place.

Welded to a jagged razor riff, There Ain't No Fool In Ferguson is an unhinged, spitting rant clocking in at well under three minutes.

"If you can cope in this hopeless hepatitis piss-rag Molotov cocktail monobrow shithole, baby, then you can cope anywhere at all," snarls Andy Falkous like his independent American punk record collection depends on it. Whatever's going on in the collective head of Mclusky, it's based in a dark place indeed.

AA track 1956 And All That is slower, finding Andy Falkous screaming words about killing, with a kiss-off yelp of "Your son looks like Michael Jackson". Fantastic."

BBC Wales, Joe Goodden

Mclusky - Undress for Success

www.emusic.com/10909243

"We're sad to report that the recording of Mclusky's feverishly-awaited third album has been put on hold for a few months, thanks to a parting of ways with hard-hitting sticksman Mat Harding.

But Cardiff's premier band of sarcasm-heavy punk noiseniks have not let us down yet, and new single Undress For Success reaffirms that pledge with charmingly wonky style.

A cyclical, naggingly jaunty riff revolves over and over as frontman Andy Falkous barks out non-sequiters in a staccato voice that suggests a sergeant major on the brink of some very surreal madness: "Let's have Abraham for breakfast! Underexposed and dead wrong!"

It's a damn sight odder than the bracing rock roar of McLusky Do Dallas, but oddly addictive - so much so, that Radio 1's Colin Murray premiered by playing it three times in one show. A potential breakthrough disguised as a nervous breakdown, then: how typically Mclusky."

BBC Wales, Louis Pattison

III

I mentioned in relation to the previous 'No Covers' art post (itself a Mclusky reference) that I would post some original artwork of mine. The covers in that post were of course made from my own photographs, but not anything done by hand, exactly.

The piece above is a pen sketch I made of a photograph (the lazy artist's shortcut), of an iced-over stream in the Wicklow Mountains taken a few years ago. I like to think I was influenced by Japanese-style drawing - minimalist, suggestive; abstract(ed) yet communicating the 'essence of its subject. But my experience is that people don't know what I'm drawing in the first place (the top part is a lump of ice, and the lower a stream of water, by the way).

In any case, I decided to use the drawing as the basis for a back cover of the Mclusky singles. Each of them I bought legit from eMusic (hence the links) but that only provides a small image of the front cover and leaves the rest up to the imagination. One of the reasons why I chose this particular artwork was that it echoed slightly the very stylish Too Pure logo.

Below are the backs of each of the sleeves for the four Mclusky singles I've posted here: in order, 'To Hell With Good Intentions' and 'That Man Will Not Hang' from the last post; 'There Ain't No Fool in Ferguson' and 'Undress for Success' from this post. Let me know what you think; you can tell from the smudges, creases and odd marks that they are well listened to - and they even get that circular imprint from the disc inside, just like a real 7" cover!

***UNOFFICIAL ARTWORK***

Shooting at Unarmed Men - Girls Music (Promo Single)

Tomorrow I'll post part two of the Mclusky Singles post, but for now here's a nice little ditty (and genuine vinyl rarity) from one of the two ex-Mclusky bands (the other being Future of The Left).

Shooting at Unarmed Men began while Mclusky was still active as a band and shared the same label Too Pure, hence this promo single. The Wikipedia page on the band is a little confusing: band leader and former Mclusky bassist Jon Chapple emigated to Melbourne, Australia in 2006 and the band played "their last gig in the Northern Hemisphere on April 16th 2006 at Cardiff's Clwb Ifor Bach", which makes the date on this poster - from clwbiforbach.blogspot.com, 'Home to the Underground Promoter' - a little strange.

('Clwb Ifor Bach = Little Ivor's Club, named after a medieval Welsh nationalist rebel)

(I don't know about anybody else, but I find the Welsh language kind of cool. Maybe it's the small part of my genealogical heritage, or maybe it's the similarities with the Irish language - 'Clwb Ifor Bach' would be 'Club Ivor Beag' as Gaeilge)

Shooting at Unarmed Men represent one part of the Mclusky sound, with current noisemakers Andy Falkous's Future of the Left representing the other. It's what you might call a qualitative difference, and I'm not sure I can describe exactly what it is. Shooting at Unarmed Men take some of the more melodic parts and quirky rhythms of Mclusky, while Future of the Left and Andy Falkous represent the rawer, apopleptically vocal side. At least that's the way I understand it.

They both sound very much like Mclusky though - in a progressive sense - and that's the important thing. I guess it's a reflection of Mclusky's schizophrenia and unity through diversity that it could produce two qualitatively different and yet admirably representative bands; without being able to easily pigeonhole either of them as taking 'that part' of Mclusky's sound.

'Girls Music' is a great twisted pop song, with a good Pixies line in catchy rhythm and pieces of throwaway nonsense like "did you know your vagrance smells like tin" and the stinging refrain "I hope you like listening to music made for girls". Smooth bass, explosive guitar and vocals, and a high-pitched melody: just like your favourite Mclusky song all over again, almost.

'Weapons of Mass Reduction' is a little different; similar format perhaps, songwriting-wise, but scuzzed-out and compressed to an almost unrecognizeable degree. Mclusky always did like to combine pop catchiness with impressively abrasive, punky noise; and this is pretty much what's happening here, in a charmingly lo-fi indie way. Plus, the line "contrary to his take on time he he had been aware of himself physically for only three days" delivered in a mock-serious British tone always cracks me up.

Shooting at Unarmed Men - 'Girls Music' (vinyl rip)

Vinyl Inscriptions: Side A - "May the best loser win". Side B - "What are the odds of it happening twice"

Further Listening: 'Girls Music' was also released on Pure as a proper single, both I think with 'Weapons of Mass Reduction' as the B-side and with 'Pink Ink'; 'Girls Music' also appears on their debut album. Their second full-length, 'Yes! Tinnitus!' (shades of Regulator Watts there) is very much recommended; while a third, Triptych - a three-disc record; how punk is that! - has apparently been released in Australia.

Shooting at Unarmed Men on eMusic (incl. 'Girls Music' single)

Shooting at Unarmed Men - band website

Friday Video - Betamax Format, 'The Knife'

"Betamax Format are the video dead"

www.myspace.com/betamaxformat

"...with a name that suggests both the 80s and a taste for the alternative, [Betamax Format] played a great set from beginning to end"

hardcorefornerds.blogspot.com/fight-like-apes-live-village

You might have seen me writing about this band in my piece about the Village on New Year's Eve, where they were one of the support bands. Apparently they also played support for the Liars in 2005, which as good as FLA are, probably makes it a step down. Anyway, on the night that I saw them, they were very impressive. Not least, for their visual show.

Somewhere between 'Electro/New Wave' (their Myspace description), 'electro-emo' (Unarocks in the Tribune) and "Sallynoggin Psych" (again from their Myspace), Betamax Format play moody, downtuned electronic rock with actually quite a nice line in melody. The song from the video below, 'The Knife', isn't as strong in my opinion as 'You Are Welcome in My House' which you can hear on their Myspace as well. In fact, Betamax Format I don't think have put out anything physical yet, although I think they are in the process of recording an EP.

They have released their T-shirts, though, the design of which you can see at the top of the post, by Artur Arbit (http://www.twistedrobot.com/) a NYC artist who also does work in Berlin and Dublin. (The actual shirt, which I haven't got, only comes in black... naturally)

Random atmospheric photograph...

(Sallynoggin Church, Dublin, March 2007)

Killian Broderick who edited the footage (from Quentin Tarantino's Deathproof) for this video, also directed and edited the videos for Ham Sandwich's 'Keepsake' and 'St. Christopher' (see end of the post here). Not that there's much musical similarity between the two bands, but it's nice to see some semblance of a 'scene' in Ireland.

Finally, it is mostly for the purpose of self-indulgence that I post about local/national bands, but it would be interesting to know what the readers of my other posts think about this stuff:

A.V. Club Blog: Vinyl Retentive

VINYL RETENTIVE #1: PINHEAD GUNPOWDER

"First, a note: I received a USB turntable for Christmas. After a couple months of software hassles (which continue), I finally started ripping some of my dormant old vinyl. My collection is small to moderately sized and overwhelming dominated by obscure ‘90s punk, but there are noteworthy gems hidden in there—and in the collections of my fellow A.V. Clubbers, covering all genres. Here’s the first write-up of what we find while crate-digging in our own houses…"

Just when I think things couldn't get any better, a new feature at the Onion A.V. Club turns up this morning. The A.V. Club Blog is where a lot of the really interesting stuff on the site turns up: Permanent Records (see my previous post here), Noel Murray's Popless.

This feature reads actually like an amalgam of those two, with an in-depth description of the band and the scene it came from, a sample track and at-a-glance descriptors ("File Under: The sound of a dam about to burst"). A cool thing is that he puts in the 'Vinyl Inscription', which is something I've only found out about since I started buying vinyl. I am definitely looking forward to more of these.

As for Pinhead Gunpowder, the only release of theirs I have is the album Shoot the Moon. This sounds a lot more hardcore; and I guess linking it makes up for leaving the band out of my top Mike Kirsch band poll last year. The winner of that was of course "the popular melodic post-hardcore band" Fuel. And also, I'm a major Green Day fan, in case you didn't know.

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Talking of other cool things that happened today (and this fits in very well with the rest of the post) I found a package from 3819 Beecher St. NW waiting on my doorstep. So far I've bought mailorder from Polyvinyl (they put in a candy bar) and No Idea via Interpunk (that was coloured vinyl, so it was cool in itself... and the inscription on Fuel For The Hate Game was pretty funny) but this was the first thing I got from Dischord so far.* Two Crownhate Ruin records, the Intermediate 7" and Until the Eagle Grins. The package was brown cardboard, rather than the white stuff I got the other times, and the address was handwritten (and the return stamp had a name written above it too). And inside there was a little handwritten note, which I scanned in above (it kinda had my name on it, but I blanked it out before posting it onto the interweb).

I know this is the kind of thing you'd expect from Dischord Records, the greatest independent punk label ever, but it's still a very nice, personalised touch.

Thanks, Dischord!

* Dischord have, quite properly, released pretty much all their catalogue on eMusic, the independent download music site, so, pre-vinyl, I've never really needed to mailorder anything from them since buying Repeater + 3 Songs in a store over here.

Ham Sandwich - Live @ Whelan's, 23/02/08

Ham Sandwich are this year's Fight Like Apes, pretty much. That's despite the fact that Ham Sandwich have been around longer, releasing the single 'click... click... BOOM!!!' yonks ago, and the fact that Fight Like Apes were still playing two of their best live songs at 12.05am on January 1st, the band from Kells are taking the limelight now.

The show in Whelan's was the album launch for their debut release (aside from about four different singles over the last couple of years) Carry the Meek. I managed to catch their instore in HMV last Friday when the album was released, and from that intimate gig (well, in a basement with a lot of Xbox games) and from listening to that album over the last week, I knew it was going to be a great night.

Carry the Meek just gets better with every listen. It's a perfect punk-pop album in terms of length, with just 10 songs, and not an ounce of filler. That's not to say what it sounds like, though. Coincidentally I went back to listening to Green Day's Dookie this week, and parts of Carry the Meek replicate the honest intensity of that album. At other times, it delves into the shimmering beauty of post-rock and indie (mmm... Editors) hung together with the male and female vocals of Podge and Niamh. Those are the real secret of the band, the combination of the low and high registers; mostly it's Niamh singing. Since it's the usual topic of this blog, I guess it's a little bit 'emo' too: the opening to 'Keepsake' reminds of a Promise Ring guitar line, and if you don't think 'Click Click Boom' has wonderful dynamics, you're an idiot.

The short set in HMV ran through all the band's 'singles' songs: the opening pair of 'St. Christopher' (containing the album's title line) and 'Keepsake', 'Never Talk', 'Words', and I think 'Broken Glass', finished by 'Click Click Boom'. On purchasing the album, I was a little surprised to find all those songs heavily - that is to say, completely - weighted towards the first half of the album. Having the last four or so songs pass without recognition, it took a while to knowingly appreciate them but when I did, I realised they were less immediately poppy than the ones before and contained more space for the band to work in, creating what are all truly absorbing indie songs.

Ham Sandwich are a band both of complexity and of simplicity. Complex, because of the span and the depth of the songs as is evident on this album; and simple, because Ham Sandwich are still a catchy 3-minute-long-song band. Scroll down below for the acoustic performance of 'Click Click Boom' on The Last Broadcast show last year to see a perfect example of that combination, in a two-minute song. Dynamics!

www.myspace.com/eathamsandwich

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'click... click... Boom!!!' (acoustic): Live on The Last Broadcast

Promo video for 'St. Christopher':

Promo video for 'Keepsake':