METRONOMY- THE ENGLISH RIVIERA – for circulation
The English Riviera, or Torbay, is Joseph Mount’s hometown and the inspiration for Metronomy’s follow up to the untamed, furious wonky pop of 2008’s ‘Nights Out’. A change in line up and direction is apparent from the start in the 30 second, strings led, title track. Things have changed; if Nights Out depicted booze and drug fuelled debauchery, this is its tidy, focused, and gentle older brother, which knows exactly what it wants to achieve.
Stand out track ‘the look’ opens with an understated, yet confident synth sheen, lulling towards percussion accompaniment of new addition Anna Prior, who hits the drum only when it is absolutely necessary in the interests of building up the stunning, gentle accumulation of parts. Similarly single guitar strums and slap-bass garnishes bide their time to appear, emerging at the perfect moment to elevate the track, as well as illustrate the delicate building of music Mount and co. have chosen for the bands new direction.
‘Some written’ is the album’s most likely track to challenge fans of ‘nights out’ . Here Mount purposely explores what he calls ‘the studio mind set’ of artists such as Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac. Which finds him elegantly approaching his way toward funk fusion, or at least, his idea of this. A sublime jazz piano chord sequence makes way for heart-felt and genuine vocals “I tried to catch you up, but I’m too late”. Unexpectedly, but carefully, the song scuttles toward sprouting more dominant synths and ends as a totally different beast than it started out, without ever developing too fast or too obviously.
It seems that what is being achieved here is more deliberate than Metronomy have ever known how to be before. An album that seems to have been written with the studio in mind, rather than warehouse raves. Self disciplined, yet never restrained, it feels cool, stylish and complete. It shows the journey of what Mount was feeling when he wrote it, his inspirations, from his town, to his favourite music. Every layer has purpose and no track outstays its welcome or feels forced, the singing contextualises the lyrics, which all emit emotion and meaning, the pieces gel together immaculately from start to end. April is very soon to be proclaiming album of the year, but outdoing this will be a challenge.
Do we need music critics anymore? (for circulation)
As long as there has been music, there has been music criticism, indeed even Neanderthals hitting bones together in caves received their share of abuse in the NME and now it seems everyone has an opinion that is expressed the world over on the internet, now with the modern availability of hearing music, are critics still necessary?
Perhaps in a simpler time when there was a need to spend large amounts of money on an album to sometimes actually hear it, criticism may have held more value.
However since the online musical revolution, things such as last.fm, myspace and more recently spotify have come along and changed everything. Why rely on what someone else has said when you can legally listen for free and make up your own mind?
And with downloading software, such as bit-torrent people could now own music (be it non-physically), weeks, sometimes months before scheduled release without shedding anything more than perhaps slight moral guilt.
So, why any longer does the opinion of a critic hold any value when it is so easy to listen to something and decide whether you want to buy it, or download/steal it?
A related modern trend is the substantial number of people reaching worldwide audiences with music criticism from blog sites, now it seems everyone is a critic and can be read by anyone with internet access.
In this situation it is hard to say whose opinion holds more value, the professional working to word counts with artistic constraint; or the hormonal teenager writing self-satisfying posts from his mum’s house with complete freedom of expression?
Not only now can anybody be a music journalist, but anyone with a computer can be a musician, and there is more new music now than there ever has been, this makes it necessary to have every caliber of critic, whether it’s the mostly objective professional that knows what he’s talking about, or an un-paid anorak, writing for his love of music, and is never afraid to be controversial and bias.
Most importantly criticising is only part of what critics do, most of what they do is spreading the word on new, exciting music; spreading enthusiasm and passion for music will always be important, and with so much music out there, more people reporting it is a natural evolution; all critics, professional, or not attempt to provide a lifeboat to help you wade through the vast oceans of new music.
Interview with Tom, from ‘Pulled apart by horses’ for hausdigital
The first thing that must strike anyone when initially hearing about you is your name, what made you choose this name?
There’s a few different answers, James came up with it, we reckon that he’s just heard a Radiohead B-side and ripped them off, I think that’s where it came from, but he had the name before we even started, and when we started making nasty noise/music it sort of fitted anyway, being named after a form of medieval torture, it has some elements of death screams.
You were recently referred to as ‘the best live band in Britain’ by the Observer, Is this title worth the numerous injuries and hospital visits?
I don’t know, we are just a bunch of idiots, who don’t really think about it. We need to invest in some sort of life-insurance, but if they ever came to one of our gigs, I don’t think they would insure us. Our guitarist James, is always smashing himself to bits, and at the moment it looks like he has 3 knees on one leg, I’m not really sure how that’s happened, he’s been in hospital a couple of times, and once he cracked his head open whilst playing and missed the rest of the gig to get it put back together.
At Leeds festival a couple of years ago, I took a massive chunk out of my shin and it just kept bleeding, and bleeding for ages (see ‘pulled apart by horses Reading and Leeds NME diary part 2’ on youtube for the gory footage)
You supported Muse earlier this year, How did you find playing alongside them in a Stadium?
It felt pretty surreal to be honest, the stage was like a giant space ship, it wasn’t a stage at all, it was like something you’d see in close encounters of the third kind, we’d never played to that many people, it was really fun to do something we never expected to do and go for it anyway. We were really nervous before we played but then talked about it and said ‘fuck it, we can only play how we normally play and hope for the best’
Before you were in a band, did you go to see bands in Leeds, and think to yourself, I want to be on that stage! And does this make playing homecoming shows in Leeds more special for you and the audience?
I have always been in bands, since I was about 15, and it’s been a part of my life for ages, but I have lags when I haven’t been in bands, so when I see a band and they are really awesome, I’ll be enjoying it and then all of a sudden, I will get really jealous and think ‘fuck! I want to be doing that! But it’s all healthy competition, and it keeps you on your game really.
Tomorrow night also on the bill are fucked up, 33, Kong and that fucking tank, have you played much with these bands before, and are you fans of any of their music?
Yeah, definitely, we are massive fans of ‘that fucking tank’ they are a big part of the Leeds DIY scene, we played our first ever gig with them in Leeds at ‘The Packhorse’ but we haven’t seen them for ages, and can’t wait to see those lads rock out. We’ve played with ‘Kong’ a couple of times before as well, they’re a good bunch of guys. It’s gonna be a tough gig, cos all the bands are absolutely amazing, yet more healthy competition I think.
As the year draws to an end, what have been your highs and lows as a band that will stick in your minds from 2010?
We had a great run with the festivals this year, we ended up having like over 2 months where every weekend we had a festival coming up, or something to look forward to, it was quite surreal, living like that, during the week, rehearsing or trying to live a normal life, and when the weekend comes, it kicks the crap out of you, that was great.
The toughest part of the year has been the last couple of months, where we have been constantly on the road, being away from home and stuck in a van with a bunch of stinking dudes. When you come home and you see Leeds, its just awesome, and everything is covered in snow now, so it looks nice, but we didn’t think we would even make it here tonight cos we got a flat tire whilst driving from London, and the roads have been pretty bad, but we’ve finally made it now!
Is BBC Radio 1 destroying music? OFCOURSE NOT! But here’s why I don’t like it anyway…
My starting point, will be from a completely fair, unbiased, point in terms of business, rather than taste, Radio 1 is unfair competition, as we all know the BBC does not show adverts on TV, or play them on the radio, they source money from licensing, how ever the mass of other radio stations playing similar music to radio 1 needs to play adverts to make money, meaning radio 1 has the unfair advantage of no ad-breaks, which is obviously preferable to listeners, meaning they will listen to radio 1 rather than rival stations.
However, now that is out of the way, this is why I don’t like it, starting with the worst offender.
The chart show on radio 1 is a rarely changing, predictable show, spanning several hours on a Sunday afternoon. As the name suggests, it plays what is already popular, and already being bought, leaving little chance for new music by unknown artists to get airplay, or a foothold on sales. I also find it funny how long some things can stay in the chart, for example, ‘sex on fire’ by ‘kings of leon’ spent 48 weeks in the UK top singles chart, so for 48 chart shows on radio 1 the song would have been played, between 4 and 7pm on a Sunday, and this is by no means a rare example, even looking at this weeks chart there are plenty of songs clocking over 10 consecutive weeks in the chart, and just 8/40 songs are new entries (currently the UK album chart has just 6 new entries).
However, It can be argued that people just want to hear songs they know and like when driving home, or cleaning the house, but these people can surely just listen to it on their ipod, or on CD (if they know what that is) even if I cannot justifiably complain about listeners wanting to hear what they know on the radio, I would still like to point out how pointless I find the idea of a chart show, people listening to the same thing over and over again, which they already own, rather than challenging themselves with music they are unfamiliar with, for me personally, discovering interests in new or existing artists is incredibly exciting, and having lots of different music to listen to, and hundreds of CD’s, is the difference between music being an interest rather than a collection of sounds.
Slightly heading away from music now, another reason to hate radio 1 is ‘newsbeat’ like the actual news, except without the detail, facts or full stories. Most of the ‘news stories’ are about pointless celebrities and the x-factor (or whatever dreadful reality show is currently showing on the ITV network) To be fair to it, it is aimed at a younger audience, who don’t think they care about politics, but I still don’t like the message this sends out.
Radio one has some specialist shows at night, but most of the time it is not hosted by DJ’s, but professional presenters, who have very little interest or passion in music or what they are playing, these presenters have very little to talk about in terms of the bland music they play on a constant loop, so they fill the time between ‘the script’ and ‘Pixie Lott’ with mindless tedious natter about their own annoying lives, Very self interested presenting includes Fearne Cottons’ hilarious ‘antics’ to get people to follow her mum on twitter, at least ‘Chris Moyles’ concentrates on the listener, and talks about them, like when he called female listeners ‘Dirty Whores’. A lot of people hate ‘Zane Lowe’, I don’t, I just think he’s a twat, constantly proclaiming every song he plays is the best song ever, but at least he is genuinely enthusiastic about what he plays.
To be fair to radio 1 they do have a more eclectic array of shows at night, and they are only giving the people what they want, this was simply a rant to put across some biased personal opinions, rather than a blog of any intent.
Man alive by Everything Everything review for circulation
A common myth, started possibly from a mis-quote from Albert Einstein is that the average man only uses 10% of his brain’s potential, although this has never been proven, you may start to believe it regardless while listening to the infinite loops of landfill indie, r’n’b by numbers and soulless pop that plague day-time radio. This is possibly a myth that Everything Everything believe, as they seem determined to fulfill all of their brains creative capacity in order to construct an album that bridges the gaps between every genre you never thought would work together, you see the band’s name can be read more like a mission statement, and at times on this record, the results are terrifyingly good.
Early single suffragette suffragette opens with understated math-rock bleeps and what sounds like the singing of a castrated hamster, and then goes on to stadium sized riffs and an angelic harmony to the lines “who’s gonna sit on your face when I’m gone?’’ (a question probably not asked by Albert Einstein). However the only weird thing about this song is how well it works.
Other songs work equally well on this album, take for example opening track ‘MY KZ, UR BF’ combining early genesis vocal crooning with funk guitars and disco synths with harmonic call and response. However the one constant through the whole album seems to be the confidence of the band and in particular frontman Jonathon Higgs, who seems like the kind of man who would go to a buffet and comeback with ice cream on his chips.
Although diverse, and so often rewarding, EE’s debut is by no means perfect, the peculiar avant garde lyrical style and references often make the songs unique, however at times, the lack of an accessible deeper meaning leaves the feeling that Jonathon and co. are being purposively incongruous in order the find an uninhabited identity or niche, Having said this, maybe it is better to have songs with lyrics like “I put a rain forest in an oxo cube” (photoshop handsome) than another fucking song about the girl down the pub.
EE occupy the gap of creative indie music, similar to that occupied last year by mercury award nominated albums by foals, and wild beasts. This is a challenging album and may not be to everyone’s taste, especially until after a few listens, but if using your whole brain’s potential to decipher this maze of music sounds appealing, then this is your cup of tea.
8/10
