indie rock

Song of the Week: "Floating On A Moment"

Ian Alterman — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 21:01:46 +0000

Song of the Week: "Floating On A Moment" Ian Alterman February 17, 2024 - 16:01

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I came very late to trip-hop, but once I did, I immersed myself in it from its beginnings with Tricky and Massive Attack through iterations from everyone from Bjork to Portishead and beyond. [N.B. Although many have disagreed with me, trip-hop found its apotheosis with Amy Winehouse, and what she and others call neo-soul is an amalgamation of trip-hop, soul, and jazz elements. I have considered writing an article on this but haven't found the time.]

In any case, I became a huge Portishead fan as soon as I heard them and a Beth Gibbons fan. I consider her among the most criminally underrated vocalists of our time.

Ms. Gibbons is about to release her first solo album in over 20 years, entitled Lives Outgrown. "Floating on a Moment" is the first single from the album, and it is simply terrific. With touches of trip-hop, soft rock, and "torchy" vocals, its insistent softness is strangely compelling, even at five-and-a-half minutes. Lyrically, its central theme -- that even a single moment can be a journey -- might seem obvious, even trite. But in her hands, it is turned into something far more ethereal and more thoughtful.

The video accompanying the song is one of the trippiest, most psychedelic videos in some time and almost worth the entire price of admission.

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Auto Corrected

Millree Hughes — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 15:37:19 +0000

Auto Corrected Millree Hughes April 26, 2023 - 11:37

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GAZ COOMBES Turn the Car Around (Virgin Music International)

New ways of recording means that a record can be made at home. Actually it can be made on your phone while traveling on the bus and uploaded to Bandcamp. The availability of any type of sound means that it doesn't have to relate to a known instrument. Is it better to stitch all your sounds together or format the record as if it was a band playing?

As someone who began as a digital artist I think having uninhibited options is bewildering. Audio software is over sanitizing everything. You really need to be deliberate about your choices and why you made them. If you're not, what you make can feel like it was made by the software.

Gaz Coombe's new record Turn the Car Around seems to be having it both ways. It's a dense record that sounds at first listen like familiar indie pop rock that uses both instruments and more abstract sounds. He was the front man of Supergrass: the great BritPop troupe. He's made a number of interesting solo albums but this one is his best. Sounding like it was made by a band, it coheres with his history and determines how he will play it live. But I think he's largely made this record on his own and in his own studio.The cover is utterly without artifice, it's a straightforward photo of Gaz sitting in the studio, holding a guitar.

The chorus of "Overnight Trains," the first track, rises up from a somber verse with the shimmer of a Wally Stott arrangement for '60s Scott Walker. Orchestra, bass, anything, can hint across the decades so that you find yourself reading influences in a line as they occur and deeper into the mix along the Z axis.

"Don't Say It's Over" is a plaintive ballad with a solid groove that's all mood and colour. "Feel Loop (Lizard Dream)" has a narrow melodic scope but the arrangement is all atmosphere. It leads to a descending chorus where all the "Gazs" are playing together in a basement.

The tambourine (or at least that's what I think it is) of "Long Live the Strange" has an eerie lack of commitment. Gaz playing Gaz has a refreshing "just enough" quality. There isn't that familiar cloying need to have everything be perfect.

"Not the Only Things" is a gloriously singable song that is so layered that you feel as if you're trying to follow bouncing lights in a dark wood.

"I know you're waiting for the perfect scene
Untie your wings and turn them over
Cos they're not the only things
It's not the only call"

We are being encouraged to take off too just as in a perfectly languid, blissful way, this song does.

More than the individual tracks the whole album has a coherent character that's hard to pin down. In a time when they are so quickly unmoored from each other for playlists, this is a record that asks to be heard in order.

"Turn the Car Around" is more perfect Pop with encouraging lyrics. Just when you think you can't move you're raised just a little higher.

"This Song" reinforces the template of the rock solid beat under a minor ballad. Beyond that I can hear filmic embellishments. Morriccone-like dulcimer thrums and distant piano figures. Gaz sculpts his lyrics, carving the percussion of consonants and the stretch and closure of vowels.

"A shot like a bullet then she'll decide
But I feel the needle when I see her cry"

"Sonny the Strong" is like plainchant leaving him the space to build layers of sound around it. "Dance On" is yet another great song. It sums up the feel of the record. A little blue sky overcast with a kind of yearning quality that at times rises up above the cloud cover into pure bright air.

Gaz is deliberate. He's saying it is time to turn the car around. Away from auto-tuned Crap Hop and mass produced Pop. Gaz shows us that the way forward lies in the personal. Who you are, where you've been and what you want. In the diary, the book of notes and the Watercolour sketchbook.

Gaz Coombes is currently on Tour

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Song of the Week: "Silent Running"

Webmaster — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Song of the Week: "Silent Running" Webmaster February 9, 2023 - 10:00

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Gorillaz have a dope new funked up tune and video wherein Damon Albarn and his crew channel early '80s David Bowie. The wonderfully animated video charts Murdoc, Noodle and Russel as they try to solve the mystery of 2D's disappearance. The single features vocalist and long-time Gorillaz collaborator Adeleye Omotayo. It's from their new studio (8th) album Cracker Island (Warner Records) and will be released on February 24th, 2023. Incidentally, their epic long player features additional collaborations with Bad Bunny, Beck, Stevie Nicks, Tame Impala & Bootie Brown, Thundercat.

Gorillaz will perform live this Spring at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on Friday 14th and Friday 21st April 2023.

*For you geezer music freaks not in the know, the virtual band GORILLAZ was created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, and is singer 2D, bassist Murdoc Niccals, drummer Russel Hobbs, and Japanese guitar prodigy Noodle.

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Virtual Virtues and Crimes

Robert Cochrane — Sun, 15 May 2022 23:38:44 +0000

Virtual Virtues and Crimes Robert Cochrane May 15, 2022 - 19:38

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Tim Arnold's Super Connected

The Temple of Art & Music @ Mercato Metropolitano, London

"Super Connected" is Tim Arnold's response to the digital age and its insidious influence upon society. A filmic essay, post-Warholian in tone, it lands a visual punch upon the virtual world. Dystopian by nature the concept harnesses' his frustrations well to purvey the threat he perceives. A polymath's exercise on how connections can be anything but.

For one night only as the film rolls in the wonderfully kooky and ritzy venue of The Temple Of Art and Music. Arnold, stage left, performs the songs that are its soundtrack. An inspiring aural confection that references the scale of Radiohead and the panache of David Bowie he even has Stephen Fry as an occasional narrator. A cavalcade of references abound. Home movie ethos and animation merges with elements akin to Dr Who and sci-fi. The film stars Arnold and Kate Alderton as the nuclear family in meltdown in not so sweet suburbia. There's an exquisitely surreal moment in the show when the dancer, prima ballerina Daniela Maccari (Lindsay Kemp's dance partner and founder of Kemp Dances), glides across the stage in an act of visual escape from the screen. A moment of grace that brings to mind Kate Bush.

At the end of it all Arnold removes himself from Facebook. A bold and audacious act but the problem with genies, especially digital ones, they are impossible to return to the bottle from which they sprang.

This is a work and an idea which it must be hoped flies once more beyond the confines of this single evening to continue connecting with the outside world. There is a joyous moment when the audience with their hands in the air connect with each other to the strains of Elgar's "Nimrod".

A happening within a happening.

(Sign up for the future Super Connected events at https://superconnected.technology/.)

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Song of the Week: "Aqaba"

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 13 May 2022 20:13:17 +0000

Song of the Week: "Aqaba" Robert Cochrane May 13, 2022 - 16:13

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SHEARWATER: "Aqaba"

Shimmering through a creeping piano motif Shearwater's new single "Aqaba" (from the album The Great Awakening, out 10 June 2022) is majestic, an essay in fragile, eerie understatement. Effortless and eloquent it drifts, swoops and falls like the cadences of an encroaching tide. Perfect indication that the six years wait since their last album is about to be rewarded fulsomely.

Brutal tenderness exuding eloquence a shifting, shimmering sea of strings crest below Jonathan Meiburg's voice, a haunting falsetto in elegant glide. A song of bruised but exquisite melancholy, he even has some subtle interventions from a Guayanese toucan, perhaps a first and only collaboration of its kind, a deft and magical atmospheric touch.

This is a smouldering epic akin to Scott Walker in collaborative mode with Vaughan Williams. There are traces of late period Talk Talk, Tindersticks, and the criminally underrated Perry Blake. Artistry poised and breathtaking as an act of grace. Drift into a mystical world you won't ever want to leave.

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Song of the Week: "Sunday Never Comes"

Dusty Wright — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 23:42:35 +0000

Song of the Week: "Sunday Never Comes" Dusty Wright November 3, 2019 - 18:42

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Robyn Hitchcock has always been a smart art/indie rocker -- clever lyrics, hook-filled arrangements, concise songs. His latest -- "Sunday Never Comes" -- is a tasteful mid-tempo ballad that confronts a middle-aged artist longing for his lover. As Robyn claims, "the theme is distance, separation, and resolution." It was written for the 2018 film Juliet Naked. Gorgeous arpeggiated guitars and Robyn's laidback delivery pull you in right from the top. The songs reminds me of his 1991 classic "She Doesn't Exist." Well played, Mr. Hitchock.

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A Darkened Light

Robert Cochrane — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:47:14 +0000

A Darkened Light Robert Cochrane October 23, 2019 - 14:47

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Pat Dam Smyth: The Last King (Quiet Arch Records/Rough Trade)

Pat Dam Smyth couldn't be described as a man who hurries his muse along. Seven years have passed since the release of The Great Divide his perfectly structured debut album, so The Last King has an unfettered air and an inherent conciseness infused with flashes of darkened insights, painfully honest revelations and a playful kind of gloom. It is an album that resembles a broken diary, confessional, introspective and candidly revealing, but one that builds and captures the attention of the listener, to return, again and again to for fresh solace and rewards. It also has an assuredness of touch and tone that distances it from the crowd. Belfast born, but London based this Mr Smyth is the embodiment of a troubadour at large. His back story reads like a musician's version of Kerouac's On The Road. From a sojourn in Paris, to a breakdown in Berlin, and hanging out with comedians in Hollywood, this rolling stone has gathered and dispensed with some interesting variations of moss.

The album opens with "Kids" a Pink Floyd-ian dirge that references The Troubles, and their backdrop aspect to a childhood in Belfast that sets the controls to the hurt in this son. "I miss the sound of Chinooks/ in stormy weather/ Soundtrack to my youth/ That's all you'd ever hear," A powerful introduction that grows from a gloom of synths into a dark and melodic statement of remembrance and admission. This perfectly sets the tone for "Catch A Fish" where he confesses "I never understood the virtue/ Of the happiness I kept inside / with every dream and wish I ever had/ I watched myself die." There is a haunting honesty at play with his self-revealing that never slips into self-indulgence. With the title cut "The Last King" a menacing nursery rhyme with the quality of a bewitching melody of catchy poppiness reminiscent of early Prefab Sprout the album hits a confidence of stride. He deals lightly but powerfully with his breakdown in that city via "Goodbye Berlin" -- "And everyman's got pain you know/ The trick is to let it go/ I've got mine but it's not yours to see/ Only when you get to know me" is curiously prosaic and uplifting in manner which sublimates well with the Gothic country touches that annotate it. He follows through with 'Doesn't Matter Now' a confessional lament with certain lilting qualities that suggest Chris Isaak, albeit a rather gravel-laced version drowning in an eloquence of strings.

"Another World" features the exquisite tones on Ren Harvieu on backing vocals. "We'll go walking in the city/ That never used to sleep/ And to listen to the silence/ Of the great and unwashed souls," suggesting "Ghost Riders In The Sky" on heavy downers. A Nick Cave-like tone and phrasing imbues "Juliette" via its uplifting swagger and surefire hook of a refrain that builds and grows till it gracefully burns low. With "Dancing" one is presented with a perfectly paced, country infused lament that slithers and twitches like the final throes of a dying snake, whilst "Teenage Love" is burdened by the kind of regret that the title infers, "And now I suffer in silence/ I'll take those words you never said/ To the grave." It blossoms to become a sinister mini epic based upon a swagger of growling guitar all power chords in dark attire. 'Where The Light Goes' holds elements of Bill Fay in its implicit but almost casually dour folkiness, a throwaway lament that hammers sorrow home with an optimism at odds to the sentiments it is laying bare.

"After summer I could /Barely look you in the eye/ 'Cause what do you say when/ Somebody's lover has gone forever?"

A perfect signing off to an album of subdued elegance and power. It can only be hoped that there won't be another gestation period of seven summers before we are gifted with further gems. Albums like this arrive all too rarely, are meant to be savoured, shared and valued, but primarily to be celebrated. It is easy to see what attracted Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos to this project. Integrity is a quality that's nigh impossible to manufacture. Bathe and savour in the darkening light of an honest and rewarding piece of work. In many ways it seems an album perfumed and informed by the powerful strains of exile.

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Song of the Week: "Sister Soundcheck"

Dusty Wright — Sun, 26 May 2019 14:45:15 +0000

Song of the Week: "Sister Soundcheck" Dusty Wright May 26, 2019 - 10:45

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Do you miss the rockin' swagger of The Replacements? If so, you'll def dig on "Sister Soundcheck," a wonderful rough and tumble tune from the NJ-based quartet Waiting For Henry. In fact, their new six-song EP The Gospel of Moby Grape was recorded and produced by former Replacement bassist Tommy Stinson. (Check out his excellent band Bash & Pop. I wasn't aware he played with Guns 'n Roses from 1998-2016.) This heartfelt track was penned and is sung by guitarist David Ashdown and features a hooky chorus and just enough electric guitar edge to keep things percolating. Worth the effort, indeed.

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When Was The Last Time You Went To A Laser Show?

C. Jefferson Thom — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 18:10:25 +0000

When Was The Last Time You Went To A Laser Show? C. Jefferson Thom February 27, 2019 - 13:10

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I think the last time I went to one was also my first time. It was around 1998 and looking back laser shows were probably already dated when I got around to checking them out. All I can recall of that first experience were extremely basic cartoons that seemed to quiver uncomfortably accompanied by flashing images of items like guitars and musical notes. It wasn't very good... but I don't recall the music that was played with it being very good either, so when I saw that there was a laser show at Seattle's Pacific Science Center that would be animating Tool's seminal album Aenima it seemed like a good time to re-visit this unlikely art form.

The technological shift that has occurred since 1998 is one of the most remarkable since the Industrial Revolution, computers have moved from large, clunky luxury items reserved for big business and the wealthy to things that everybody now casually has in their pockets and devices that were cutting edge in my youth are now archaic novelties. We are living in the future and I naturally wondered if laser shows had been swept up in all the advancements. You'd assume that there must have been improvements, right? It can't still be a series of twitching stick figures rocking out, imposed on someone else's music...

Good news, it's not... at least not at the Pacific Science Center. Laser shows don't seem to have made the same monumental leaps as some of their fellow technologies but there have been significant improvements. The era of basic representational simplicity is over and this show's designers (a team with the following stage names: JoJo, Ziggy, Lazar Wolf, and OB-1) have created something far more engaging...

You sit down, look up, the lights darken, and the laser show begins. Simple imagery develops into something more involved with the rhythms of the music, occasionally exploding into moments where the song and visuals meet in a sweet spot of intense unity. It's fun. It has its limitations but it's still thoroughly enjoyable. One of the remaining vestigial organs of the older laser shows is the more representational work. While this show's animation is certainly more involved from what I remember from that first show I saw in '98 it still seems like a hurdle that may be too high for the medium to completely jump. The strongest moments are those involving building patterns that can induce a hypnotic spell as the laser dome pulses into a cross between a starry night sky seen on psychedelics and an animated computer screen-saver circa 2001. The experience is particularly effective when they successfully create dimensions of depth through the use of stage smoke that captures a lower field of rolling beams shoot across the audience as the main stage patterns form on the ceiling above. Those are the moments that are easiest to get lost in and where you don't have to chase the trip but can just relax and expand into it.

I'm not sure if the same design team will be involved with future laser shows at the Pacific Science Center but if the upcoming presentations share this one's quality and apparent level of dedication then it's well-worth the novelty of the experience. While it's too late to catch Laser Tool (which wrapped this past weekend) Laser Bowie starts next month and if you like David Bowie then listening to his music on a solid sound system complimented with the visuals of a laser show leaves plenty of room for the imagination to flourish.

...and if you don't like David Bowie then you should reconsider every decision you've made in your life.

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Song of the Week: Change of Pace

Dusty Wright — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 22:53:04 +0000

Song of the Week: Change of Pace Dusty Wright December 6, 2018 - 17:53

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Check it out! Andy Frasco & the U.N. have just released yet another catchy, badass tune to uplift and inspire. It's Friday and time to get on your good foot. Hailing from LA, Frasco (lead vocals, piano), Andee Avila (drums), Shawn Eckels (Guitar), Ernie Chang (Saxophone), and Chris Lorentz (Bass) know how to throw it down. From his soon-to-be released third studio album Change of Pace (2/22/19), check out the studio version here.