Spraydog are a band that would’ve fared much better if they’d have been operating in the American underground scene of the early-to-mid nineties. Their fuzzy, simple, sweet-natured songs, with dual male/female vocals struggling for space amongst warmly overdriven guitar lines, remind me of the output of labels like Simple Machines and Slumberland. They share a sense of hopefulness and melody with bands of yore like Velocity Girl, Lilys and Tsunami – stretching the parameters of indie rock with odd touches of dissonance and faltering lo-fi production, but never forgetting to keep the tunes in the foreground.

Over Karate Summer Camp‘s fourteen tracks, the mood is mainly one of forward-looking resolution; of making the best of unfortunate situations. There are nods towards the influence of a variety of bands – the Sonic Youth ‘Mote’-style opening of ‘Prizefighters’, the dreamy My Bloody Valentine vocal style of previous single ‘Allison Blaire’, the Codeine/Low slowcore pondering of ‘Bring All Your Sorrows’, for example – but in the main Spraydog’s sound, whilst not devastatingly original, is slowly becoming something all their own.

I’ve listened to this album over and over recently, and it doesn’t seem to do anything but repay such repeated listening. There is the odd touch that isn’t entirely in character for the band, like the aggressive yelped vocals of ‘One Big So-So’, which don’t quite work, but in spite of a very few faults this is still a solid, successful album, that marks out Spraydog as a band with a big heart and an uncanny knack with melody.

More on diskant:
Review of 2006’s ‘Allison Blaire’ single
Interview with Ferric Mordant Records

Spraydog
Ferric Mordant

I ended my review of TD Lind’s previous single ‘Come In From The Cold’ with the suggestion that he ‘could be pushed into the mainstream with the help of a hitmaking producer and an integrity-free manager’. What do you know, on ‘Radio Proposal’ that seems to have happened. Kind of.

Admittedly, the producer here is Lind himself, and I can’t say who he’s managed by. But where his previous single was a chirpy blues number without many connections to the current foibles of mainstream music, ‘Radio Proposal’ borrows from the mid-70s pop stylings of Supertramp or Godley & Creme (and, perhaps tellingly, with their recent success, The Feeling). It’s all one-two-one-two rhythms, plonking goodtime piano and overblown production. It’s not particularly offensive or unpleasant, just strange as a follow-up to TD Lind’s previous single – simplicity and subtlety replaced by pomp and musical-comedy style arrangements.

For my money, it’s one of the other two songs on the CD that proves a better indication that Lind is capable of more interesting work. ‘Last Kiss’ echoes ‘Come In From The Cold’ with quiet and repetitive backing music to a simple vocal delivery, building and receding in intensity and featuring a bowed saw solo that is as bizarre as it is pleasing.

On the basis of the two singles I’ve heard, TD Lind is slightly struggling to find his stylistic feet. If he can choose the path of invention that seems open to him, he could fare very well.

TD Lind

What with Arctic Monkeys, Futureheads and the (geographically realigned from Oxford to Ashby de la Zouche) Young Knives all achieving varying degrees of success and fame lately, not to mention the constantly impressive output of bands from places like Leeds and Nottingham, it seems that a non-Southern demographic is driving a lot of indie music these days. That’s not to say that London isn’t still a focus for bands and the music industry, but it’s interesting that bands that exist in distant locations, far from the perceived centre of music, seem to have much more fun in their music. It’s refreshing to hear enjoyment and silliness in music at times, as opposed to relentless grit and ‘real’-ness.

Dartz! have no short supply of bouncing, ‘up’ songs, on the basis of this, their debut album. They’re at the connecting point of the melodic straightforwardness evident in the music of the aforementioned bands, and the complex guitar patterns and syncopated rhythm structures of more hip, in-the-know outfits like Battles and Foals. What stops Dartz! from turning out twelve songs of middling copyist style-over-content short term appeal – which is, I’m sure, all that many of their contemporaries are capable of – is a genuine skill at assembling songs and injecting just enough individuality to hint at great things to come.

So for every melody-rich, comfortably familiar tune like previous single ‘Once, twice, again!’ or ‘Laser Eyers’, which fit right in with the listening habits of hip young haircuts about town, there is a glimpse into a depth of ingenuity and quality evident here. Be it ‘Prego Triangolos’ with its falsetto backing vocals, ‘St. Petersburg’ with its ridiculously catchy funk rhythm section, or the unnamed secret track which effortlessly develops Tortoise-like lazy repetitions into dreamy Explosions In The Sky-style layers of distortion and echo, Dartz! have done on this album what I hoped they would. They’ve taken a template of influences and style which currently works well for many bands right now, and started to twist it with their own ideas and skill into something new. What’s very exciting is that they seem to be able to capture that magic combination of radio-friendly recognition and beard-stroker-friendly quirkiness. This is how bands become influential, rather than being purely based on their influences.

Dartz!
Xtra Mile Recordings

“Why do you stick to me?” questions The Pines’ Pam Berry on It’s Been A While, a collection of songs from the iconic pondcrossing somberpop romancers. Berry is one of the most recognizable voices in American indiepop, with a dulcet croon and a perfect sense of timing and timbre, and we’ve stuck with her since her days in the fetishized Black Tambourine though her work with The Pines, with good reason.

Though songs like “Marie Claire,” “Please Don’t Get Married” and “Familiar” catch Berry and Pines-mate Joe Brooker in quite whimsical moods, the mostly drumless record rarely reaches past dreamy blues or melancholy greens, giving it a folksy pop quality that makes it enjoyable mostly in the rain, or over a post-break-up scotch.

It’s hard to complain when you like every single song on the record, but for reasons unknown, It’s Been A While is not a completist artifact. It’s a collection of compilation tracks, single and EP cuts and a couple unreleased covers (of which the Young Marble Giants cover is an absolute gem), which begs the question, when will the next collection come out so we can fill in the holes. It may have been better to just package it all together.

A must-have record this early in the year when so much crap is coming out, though, is more than welcome.

-Maxwell Williams

Matinée

From the illustration on the front cover (businessman with briefcase, with clockwork winder emerging from his back – do you see?) to lyrics such as these…

“Music ain’t the only means of venting our frustrations
But we can use it to provoke some emotion
Apathy is taking hold of our jilted generation”
(‘Generation Next’)

“Some say that they are ravers
Some say they’re rock and roll
But I for one like music based on
quality control”
(‘Wind up toys’)

…it’s clear that Capdown have a chip on their shoulder about something, and across its twelve tracks, this album is almost relentless proselytising. They want us to get what they’re telling us, but what that is doesn’t seem to be exactly clear. It seems to be something about there being a lot of fakers in the music industry, and a lot of people somehow not living their lives with the same free spirit as they.

Now that’s all fine, I don’t have a problem with it being reaffirmed that the world, and the music industry, isn’t the most honest, truthful or original place. But a small alarm goes off somewhere when lyrics like…

“…up until now all you seem to put out
Is a badly played version of Blink meets No Doubt”

…when it’s tied to such derivative ska-punk as is scattered across this album. Putting these double standards aside, and accepting the fact that Capdown may have been doing this stuff for long enough to have at least some longevity points, there are some perfectly solid songs here. Angry-sounding guitars and clanging rhythms are tied to the odd sax squonk and that immediately familiar wailing vocal style so favoured by our ska-punk brethren, but it’s not all so one-dimensional.

In its less vocally-reliant passages, the music here can be thunderingly engaging. At times – such as hardcore-styled ‘Thrash Tuesday’ or the riffed-up ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ – Capdown show some different sides to their seemingly singular style. It just seems to not quite ring true that this album, proclaiming vociferously the downfall of modern music/the world, sounds like the work of so many other bands. Are they bringing down the system from within, or naively contributing to the very things they seem to be railing against?

Capdown
Fierce Panda

Can Errors do no wrong? Salut! France is quite possibly the most accessible thing they’ve done – condensing all the best bits of all their other songs into one 3 minute pop song, just short enough that you really want to hear it again immediately after. It’s unmistakably Errors with a dark doomy electronic bassline, delicate guitar melodies, tricksy, ever-changing beats and a clever knowingness that puts them up there somewhere between Kraftwerk and the Pet Shop Boys.

Errors must do a lot of walking. Most of their songs have a driving beat at the heart that’s just the right bpm to keep you going and, I find, forego the bus and just walk into town. They also have nicely timed quieter interludes so you can slow down and see what colour the sky is today and how much longer it’s going to take to finish building those flats. There’s a flow and an intricacy to their songs that makes them very easy to fall right into and forget yourself. I’m already quite impressionable but I know if that throbbing bassline kicks back in at an inopportune moment I will quite likely find myself walking into oncoming traffic.

Maeve Binchy on the other side is more downbeat with mournful robotic vocals and layers and layers of shimmering sounds that’s altogether quite lovely. If you’re not familiar with Errors then really, this single is your perfect opportunity, and you really should take it as at this rate their album is going to be, well, the greatest thing ever. Even better, this comes on lovely thick custardy yellow vinyl. I almost want to eat it.

(HAH, I published this and Blogger informed me: “Your blog published with errors.” YES, it did. Well done).

Errors
Rock Action

Since their early days as Dustball, Dive Dive have always maintained a certain steady handed reliability, and been a super-tight live band with a knack for a certain familiar type of poppy indie rock. As a recorded prospect, however, they’ve left me slightly cold in the past, and it’s been hard to think of them as much beyond one of very many such bands like Jetplane Landing, Ash, Econoline and so on. A good band, don’t get me wrong, just not yet a great band.

I was hoping that this album might be the one that tips the scale toward greatness. For the first few tracks, it seems like it might not happen, and then a trio of songs – ‘Maybe I’m OK’, ‘Holding Back the Broken Door’ and ‘Take It, It’s Yours’ – solidify all of the glimpses of magic that Dive Dive have been hinting at over the past couple of years.

‘Maybe I’m OK’ leaps from its plaintive intro into a looping, loping guitar riff, before turning several melodic corners that take the never-not-hip angular guitar rock template and jam it artfully into a radio-friendly pop-shaped hole. ‘Holding Back the Broken Door’ takes its lead from early Placebo – it’s all vibrato vocals and guitar interplay over a relentlessly together rhythm section. ‘Take It, It’s Yours’ slows down the pace, with social-commentary lyrics developing a song from simple beginnings into a layered festival singalong tour de force: complete with requisite noisy forays and head-nodding bouncy bassline.

By the time these three short songs have passed, it’s clear that Dive Dive have finally nailed down what makes their live shows so enjoyable – on-the-money performances and arrangement, the combined forces of accessible melody and quirky dissonance, and enough stylistic breadth to maintain interest – and put it into recorded form. This is equally an aggressive, sensitive and playful album, and all the better for its self-imposed awkwardness. Like previous Oxford bands before them (Youthmovies and The Young Knives, for example) Dive Dive are attaining that rare combination of mainstream and experiment; familiarity and challenge.

Dive Dive

Catchy, goodtime, hi-hat-riding guitar pop, with many of the Current Indie Vogue boxes ticked (Stop-start guitar lines? Break for handclaps? Sounds a bit new wave? Tick, tick, tick). ‘Once, twice, again!’ hasn’t done much to advance the Dartz! sound since their previous release, but it’s still a perfectly get-up-and-go slice of infectiousness that would, if you can ignore the extreme Futureheads similarities, work brilliantly in a live context.

The dual forces of math rock skronk and new wave upbeat pop have been converging for some time, and Dartz! are right on that faultline – clear guitar melodies and vocals tightly bound to a jumpy, tight rhythm section. I still hope that they’ll be the one of the bands that drags an increasingly familiar sound into new territories, that brings something truly new into the world, but unfortunately this single isn’t going to kickstart that particular revolution.

Dartz!
Xtra Mile Recordings

I never heard Million Dead, Frank Turner’s previous band and a reference point that seems unconditionally attached to any mention of his name. Regardless of what they sounded like, on Sleep is for the week Turner’s music comes across as a blend of straightforward indie rock and folky strum, with a certain Celtic tinge to the vocal phrasing; lyrics to the fore and a selection of backing instrumentation ranging from simple acoustic guitar to rich, full band arrangements.

As with any singer-songwriter music, the words are the focus here. The lyrical content rarely deviates from a self-deprecating, self-examining stream of consciousness; obscure and tricky lyrics aren’t Turner’s thing, he’s all about baring the soul with descriptive words tied to specific situations and memories. At times the relentless self-focus and miserablism can grate – the heartless cynic in me wants to shake Turner out of his self-obsessed exclamations of unworthiness on tracks like ‘Romantic Fatigue’ and ‘Wisdom Teeth’. However, when such lyrics are delivered with less of a wearisome sense of irony and humour, and tied to either a richer, more dynamic melodic backing (‘The Ladies of London Town’) or an intimate, heartfelt reading (‘Must Try Harder’), they can really work.

This album presents Turner as being a nice guy, desperate to make friends, and eager to remind us of his shortcomings and hangups. The difficulty of this situation is that if you’re not in the mood for dealing with a needy friend, an indie loser complaining about his girl troubles over a pint at Nambucca, Turner can outstay his welcome with not quite enough glimmers of magic in his music. But then again, maybe we should be a better, more tolerant friend.

Frank Turner
Xtra Mile Recordings

The album version of ‘You Don’t Know Me’ is the second track on this 12″, having been usurped by Howie B’s more-than-twice-as-long remix. This makes sense to me, as the short original album version from Mumbai-based Mukul is a heavily Tricky-influenced slice of loping trip-hop, with sleepy beats and gravelled vocals. It seems unfortunately relegated to a particular time in the past. Howie B’s remix leaves nothing much beyond heavily-treated snippets of vocals, peppering them over a superb seven-minute early-house-style evocation of simplicity and repetition; crystal clear metronomic beats underlying bouncing bubbles of synth.

Third track ‘Happy Birthday’ is an elegant mix of the styles of the first two tracks – slowly modulating acid-style melodies firing off between bass tones, topped off with those wasted-style vocals. It’s ever so slightly as if Mukul has been playing a little too much with his Reason loops – he seems to lack the mastery of simplicity evident in Howie B’s remix – but there are glimmers of darkness here which suggest the possibility of a new take on an all-too-familiar trip-hop sound.

Mukul