The first I’ve heard from both this Spanish band, and this fantastically-named Leeds-based label. The album starts out with some vaguely rockabilly-sounding numbers; nicely lo-fi sounding guitar twangs over simple, plodding drums, and wandering melodic basslines. All very pleasant. After several songs, though, what could have easily stayed a twangy pop album becomes something more accomplished, and a Hello Cuca sound begins to emerge.

That Hello Cuca sound, to me, is part rockabilly; jaunty and stylish guitar playing. It’s part Liliput; yelped vocals and relentlessly repetitive rhythm. It’s part Le Tigre; female confidence and brazen poppiness. It’s part Clinic; clomping drumbeats and circular riffs. It’s part Girls in the Garage; a feeling of happy misfits. And it’s part Come on Pilgrim Pixies; knowing-sounding Spanish lyrics.

I’m worried that I’ve just described Hello Cuca as such an obvious blend of other things. Make no mistake, they’re not pure copyists or unoriginal bandwagon-jumpers by a long way. I really enjoyed this album – the fact that it reminds me of other things, whilst also holding off from going too far down any influence’s path, is a fine balancing trick to perfect.

Hello Cuca
GoJonnyGoGoGoGo

More quiet, knowingly introspective, refined pop music here, on this album of quiet and delicate songs. I seem to be hearing a lot of quiet and delicate music of late; is there more of it about than there used to be? Or perhaps I’ve become more sensitive and prone to getting ‘all emotional, like’ over the lazy strum of an acoustic guitar and the tug of a sad-sounding vocal.

Like a lot of this kind of recent music, there are smatterings of samples and electronics mixed in with the traditional core of singer-songwriter-style tunes. These are never used here as a diversion or as a needless ‘extra’, rather they add to a well-recorded set which I imagine could work beautifully as a solo live act. Some of the guitar lines here are fantastic folk pickings, which add a (good) country feel to things, and the lyrics have a somewhat ironic and harsh twist to them at times. Things never descend into martyr-style ‘why am I so misunderstood’ simplicity, and I’m left with the feeling that this album will stand the test of time well. I have been falling back into a love of effortless songwriting lately, almost rejecting at times music which is desperately trying to sound new and clever, but which can fall short so easily. The attraction of a well-turned-out song can never be underestimated.

Frankie Machine
Artists Against Success

Ted is the great divider among my friends. People I know either love him unreservedly or can’t see what the fuss is about. I have begun to use Ted as a barometer of whether someone is a warm human being worth knowing, or is a cold robot with no heart who will only throw you away like a piece of rubbish should you offer them any affection. It’s that big a deal now.

Why?

Because Ted is the MAN.

His last album Hearts Of Oak is really important to me. It was the only Minidisc my player would read on the flight to and from Australia last year and so I listened to Ted on and off for 24 hours there and 24 hours back. I know this album inside out and I love it. It reminds me of a very hard time but it shines through. See, Ted is all about fighting the fight, wearing your heart on your sleeve and delivering everything with a level of integrity that goes beyond not having a barcode on your record.
Ted is the patron saint of everyone who’s ever dealt with people in the supposed punk rock community who have their complex morals down completely but who are, ultimately, a fucking arsehole.
Ted makes political records and Shake The Streets is an unashamedly political album.

“I’ll put it to you plain and bluntly
I’m worried for my tired country”
(The One Who Got Us Out).

“I want to take it to the president, him and all the cabinet, with a broom
I want to sweep the Halls of Arrogance
sweep the walls of the excrement of these baboons”
(Shake The Streets)

Ted’s been compared to Crass before. You can see why if you’re reading this. I hate comparing
bands to other bands but that Crass comparison was genius because the review (whoever wrote it) declared Ted a mixture of the militant UK punkers and none other than Curtis Mayfield.
Because Ted is first and foremost a lover not a fighter. Or at least when he fights he does so in the name of love and with a heart of oak. This is not just political statement-making, it’s the politics of the individual. Ted knows you can wear a Smash The System badge and be a vegan and never deal with a major label but if you’re rude to the checkout girl in the supermarket for no reason, then being “punk rock” is not going to excuse you from being mean or acting like a twat.

And before this gets so wrapped up in the term “punk rock” that you never want to hear the record, let’s not forget that Ted can really write a tune.
I’ll pull back a second and admit this album was disappointing on first listen as nothing stuck out like Ballad Of The Sin Eater or Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone? from the last LP. But after 2 listens I had 3 or 4 tunes I was into and then bit by bit the songs reveal themselves and sneak into your heart and the gaps get filled and the album starts to resemble a whole that you slowly get to know better and better.
I think the initial disappointment comes from the band being much more straight up on this album. There is little exploration of sounds and with the Pharmacists reduced to a power trio the sound is direct to say the least so the songs sound similar at first and there’s less to hang your hat on. I wouldn’t presume that touring with bands like Radio 4 (who have enjoyed success beyond Ted’s now) has influenced the sounds but I wonder if this new directness from Ted is in part influenced by seeing contemporaries achieve relative success with a much more limited palette – not to mention more limited song writing skills. Thankfully Ted has not cut back on his own song writing skills and investing time in this record really shows it and in the long run the to-the-point quality of the sounds serves to emphasise how good the songs are.
The One Who Got Us Out may as well be a How To guide to writing an emotionally stirring pop punk song. It’s wonderful. As is Little Dawn which sees Ted ditch his sly, funky guitar style for a brief moment and hit some fat rock chords just in case you weren’t aware that the glorious moment was the CHORUS. And talking of CHORUS get a load of Heart Problems which positively leaps from the speakers when it hits its stride.
Picture me doing star jumps with a bit of air guitar thrown in, covered in sweat, grinning. Not a pretty sight but if you’re going to see Ted play live better get used to it.
Ted’s songs have this faintly traditional, certainly celtic feel to them that recalls Thin Lizzy a lot as well as The Pogues. Maybe Elvis Costello. But, well…better because he knows why he’s doing it and he’s doing it for all the right reasons.
Anyone who finds this too straight, too American or too simplistic (Ted criticisms I have heard) is missing the point.
Ted Leo is an American who writes direct, deceptively simple songs. It’s what he does, he’s not trying to do something arty and clever and failing. He makes songs designed to floor you and they do if you let them.
Just go and see Ted and The Pharmacists live if you’re undecided. They preach their gospel with joy and fervour. Before they start playing, take a ten pound note and put it in your shoe. You’ll be needing it at the record stall when they’ve finished.

Wow. Keep em coming. 2005 is triumphant.
I’ve never really heard LAL before. I’ve heard of them plenty. I know all about their links to Built To Spill and the K empire and the under rated Lync. I had an idea of them as being pretty cool and synthetic sounding. I don’t know why.
Jesus, unless this is a total change of direction for them, I have seriously missed out.
I’ve been listening to Dinosaur Jr a lot lately and that in turn led me to get back into Neil Young in a big way. Wilco’s latest tapped into that in me too and maybe it’s more me than the people making the music but Laughter’s Fifth is on the same track and is every bit as successful at marrying great songs to luscious sonics.
The LAL approach is more lo-fi than Wilco’s but every bit as intuitive at serving these songs the best they can.
Opener In Amber is Neil Young & Crazy Horse to a tee with the guitars sounding euphoric, crunchy and joyfully human over a melody that treads that happy/sad divide just like Uncle Neil did so well on Zuma. But it’s far from pastiche: a lot of bands that get the Neil comparison do so only by using cliched country rock sounds but neglecting to look at the simple art of writing a good verse and a good chorus.
Oh and some good lyrics too.
“I am a ghost and I float throughout your house at parties; flirting with your guests sometimes. They can’t see me, but some have even spoke to me. Yeah, that’s just fine. I’m a real nice guy…for a ghost” (I Am A Ghost).
It’s like a proper album should be, the happy songs are happy with a hint of sadness and the sad songs are heartmelters (I Won’t Hurt You – “I’ve been through paradise and out the other side”) still have a tenderness and optimism.
I don’t want to spend this review comparing LAL to other bands because it implies a magpie nature to the band that detracts from their (huge) skills, but that feeling you used to get with Built To Spill is here in buckets. If you’re a BTS fan you know what I mean: Pavement had it too. Where a band can get away with anything, no matter how cheeky because they’re so good. So one band’s ripoff is another band’s gleeful reference. Canal Street is a Lizzy-styled rowdy singalong and it rules (“I GOT IT ON CA-NAAAL STREET”). It has hand claps, a bassline to dance to, a crazy infectious tune, a Hawaiian guitar solo – what more does anyone want?
Every song is a lesser band’s single, the pop is such high quality and when it rocks it rocks too.
Buy this, see them live at ATP (or in Nottingham whydontcha).
Bring on the next winner…
(Picks Prefection by Cass McCombs out of the bag…)

“Tonight the monkey dies.” We’ve only just been introduced to this album and already it has announced its intention to murder a simian. Despite the mildly comedic image (sorry, ape-lovers), “Monkey” is a dark, brooding, and fairly noisy opener, which sets the tone for the rest of the album and suggests that it’s the monkey on their collective backs – the one telling people that they are a one-trick band who can only write sad, glacial-slow dirges that you have to strain to hear – that Low are gunning for. This is their rawk album.

The minimalist songwriting, and ear for melody are all present and correct, of course. The Great Destroyer isn’t a radical departure, just the inevitable arrival at a destination that attentive fans may have spotted on the horizon since 2001’s Things We Lost In The Fire, where the latent desire to turn up and rock out started to make itself felt in their music. However, where on …Fire, and follow-up Trust, the more energetic songs served to punctuate and add to the record’s emotional range, The Great Destroyer seems like a homogenous mush, and even more contemplative moments like “Silver Rider” and “Broadway, So Many People” get smothered in inappropriate overdrive.

It’s not a total loss, however. “Cue The Strings” allows both our ears and Alan Sparhawk’s distortion pedal a half-time break via some minimal electronics and one of the best applications of the patented Low vocal harmonies in recent memory, and “When I Go Deaf” is as sweet a folk-song as any they’ve written, at least until the ironic rock-out ending. But where, in another context, a handful of songs on this album could stand out as proud highlights in the Low canon, they are smothered by turgid bedfellows that are content to turn up, fuzz away for three minutes, and wander off again. Where Low used to move, here they just numb.

I don’t want to give away the ending or anything, but the “Great Destroyer” of the title is Time. At least, according to closing track “Walk Into The Sea”. It’s almost as if the band feel the need to justify the death of “old” Low, which, of course, they don’t. That they’ve embraced change should be commended in a world where so many make a living from rehashing past glories. One can only hope that The Great Destroyer is just a slightly uninspiring lay-by on the road to somewhere more interesting.

Low

I’ve been thinking a lot about The Male Nurse lately. With all the Franz Ferdinand stuff finally making people more aware of marvel that was the Yummy Fur, let’s hope some of that spotlight shines on their siblings, Lung Leg and The Male Nurse.

Anyway, to get to the point, I was delighted to hear more than a hint of The Male Nurse in the new demo by Glasgow duo Hex. It’s there in the jangly guitars and blasé sing-song vocals of Unready Unsteady and there’s even a bit of early Fall style shouting on Sorry For Nothing to make Hex probably Guided Missile’s favourite new band, if this was 1998.

Add the sort of drum machine that manages to make everything sound like classic eighties indie to drive the songs forward quick march, some dinky keyboard melodies and stacatto riffing and you’ve got quite the catchiest demo I’ve heard in a long time. Currently without a label so get on it, people!

Email: wearehex@hotmail.com

Weighty stuff here from the Cathode Ray Syndrome, who have even called their website War Against Cliché. They’re one of those bands with important-sounding song titles like The Art of Poetry is Dying’, and whose band manifesto offers a partial solution to the problem that ‘passion has been mislaid under manufactured society’. Big Themes, then, and themes dealt with by what are essentially instrumental post-rock tunes varying from the striking to the strikingly unoriginal. First track Princess-X might have sounded extraordinary five or six years ago, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the Tupperware party going on round at Sweep and Godspeed!’s house. It strikes magnificent, self-important poses, but chops and changes between well-trodden paths without ever sound like it wants to forge its own path.

Laudable influences notwithstanding, there’s nothing in the first three tracks to make me holler “REVOLUTION!” from the rooftops, as they shoot admiring sidelong glances at Constellation and June of 44, but – hurrah! – when the CRS* veer off and follow their hearts, they’re terrific. Kneejerk Practice pulls together fuzzy keyboard basslines and distorted beats with a closely-woven pattern of arpeggios, like These Arms Are Snakes taking their hand to Mogwai’s Christmas Steps. Solutions for Solved Problems takes a while to get going, picking its way around some pretty harmonics, but the home run locks into a great, pulsing groove, while New Theory/Robots works itself into a handclap-led quasi-disco break. Moments of brilliance, then, and that’s no bad thing.

The Cathode Ray Syndrome*

However much I musically digress into drone rock, fractured guitar noise, improvised folk or anything else which tickles my fancy, I can still never get enough of good ol’ sweet-natured indie-pop. To me there’s something magical about pure, non-cynical, non-ironic melodic pop music, and I’m glad that people still continue to stay ‘true to the path’.

Thee Moths I know next to nothing about, so I’m pleased to say that the four tracks on this CD line up in my mind alongside a legacy of records which I own – anything from early 80s Cherry Red acts like Tracey Thorn or Felt, through the tweer side of Sarah Records’ output, on to (often American) modern indie pop. At the beginning of the first track, ‘Universe Prayer’, there are Robert Wyatt-esque vocals humming gently over gentle, folky-sounding melodies which remind me of the quieter moments Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. And so it continues through the rest of the CD – plaintive, simplistic guitar lines and almost whispered female vocals adding to a feeling of warm introspection. This music has a nicely ramshackle feel to it, but backs it up with simple, but accomplished songwriting.

Thee Moths

Total Gaylord Records

A review for avant-garde left-field free-thinking music fans

Or; ‘I came for the guitar playing. But I stayed for the songs’.

Hello weird music fan. Nice hair.
Allow me to play the psychiatrist for a moment and tell you something about yourself.
You got into music when you were between the ages of 13 and 18. You started off on something relatively tuneful that you might still like because of a vague romantic nostalgia (i.e. Nirvana) but ultimately you feel you have developed your own tastes upward onto a higher plateau now.
Over time, the variables that you have to consider before you allow yourself to like a song have increased beyond ‘Does this rock?’, ‘Is this catchy?’ into complex equations involving influence, attitude, credibility, artistic vision, originality and quite possibly record label and band name and former bands of band members.
Once you liked the Lemonheads. Now you like Lightning Bolt, or maybe Wolf Eyes and Double Leopards.
It’s cool; I do too. I am not judging you. I’m talking to you as a friend.
I am also willing to bet as your tastes have developed you have recently begun to get less and less inspired by new music. It’s not surprising, you realise that if you’ve got a longer checklist to look at before letting a band affect you, then less bands will make the grade. Simple mathematics. But still, you’re going off music, it’s just not the same anymore. New bands are so yawnnnnnnnnn…
Well, I can help you out of the rot with this simple diagnosis:

YOU LIKE POP MUSIC

It’s OK. The first step to beating a problem is admitting it exists. You’re denying your brain the music it likes best. You have to sort it out before it’s too late.
Stop protesting, I don’t believe it. I saw you at the front of that Deerhoof show almost crying when they played L’Amor Stories. You probably saw me too doing the same thing. That’s because it is pop music through and through, difference is Deerhoof wrap it up in familiar noise and avant-isms so it’s OK. You think you’re there for the oddness but you’re really there for the pop. Stop arguing.
A second ago Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos came on Radio 2 (my choice of station at work) and you know what? It sounded good. I’d like to hear it back. If they’d invented a repeat button for radio I’d have pressed it. Tori Amos has nothing to do with my life but that one song was great. Admit it; you have the same feelings about songs.
It’s what makes you like one Lightning Bolt song more than another. Why you skip to Track 3 on Sonic Nurse. Why Moonlight On Vermont makes the hairs on your neck stand up whereas Hobo Chang Ba doesn’t. Or doesn’t as much at any rate.
It’s because some songs are catchy. The hook part (whatever makes it) of even the noisiest noise is still what elevates it from good to memorable.

Damn it, Werewolves Of London by Warren Zevon is now on Radio 2 and that song is FUCKING AMAZING.

Don’t panic and go out and gorge yourself on the Beatles and Zuma by Neil Young. It’s been too long and you’ll probably damage yourself forever. That’s not the way to pull you out of this; it’s too abrupt. You need a graduated approach. If not, they’ll find you after a 3 week disappearance, flat out dead on the floor of your room in a set of high quality headphones with God Only Knows by the Beach Boys playing. You’ll literally die of tune. Your heart will burst.
Plus, your friends who might not be as far gone as you (or not realise it if they are) could take this sudden shift to the dark side badly.
What you need is an album that offers tune and experiment in equal measures.

So what’s this got to do with Wilco?

Well, Wilco make pop music. And, troubled avant-garde music fan, they are after YOUR vote.
What’s more you don’t have to do anything. I know how lazy you folks are. No effort is needed on your part. They’re driving round to your neighbourhood to win you over. A Ghost Is Born is the Wilco manifesto for perfect pop music made super tasty to all you arty types.
It’s going to sort you out.
Chances are you weren’t interested in Wilco around the time of the Summerteeth LP with the sublime single Can’t Stand It. I wouldn’t have been either were it not for a chance viewing of them on the TV playing the song at Glastonbury with more passion than any of the bands they shared the stage with that day.
You might have read reports about the follow up LP Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which succeeded in being strange enough to get them dropped from Warner Bros. That album is mighty let me assure you. David Fricke, the peculiarly-jawed never-ageing editor of Rolling Stone reckons that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is going to become some kind of catch-all term for substance over style, or for a band sticking to its creative guns in the face of adversity. He’s probably right. However, it cost Wilco dearly. They lost their original drummer part way through recording to be replaced by Glenn Kotche. After the album’s completion Jay Bennett, co-songwriter of some of the record, was fired. Then, after touring the record, multi-instrumentalist wiz Leroy Bach walked too (amicably) leaving just main man Jeff Tweedy and his former Uncle Tupelo sidekick John Stirratt as original members.
Jim O Rourke enters the picture here. He mixed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and joined up with Kotche and Tweedy as Loose Fur for an LP on Drag City (which in retrospect sounds like a trial run for this Wilco record, hardly surprising seeing that the two line ups are so similar).
This time O Rourke produces and lends instrumental talents too. But don’t be mistaken and think O Rourke has sprinkled his improv noise dust on this. It isn’t his contributions that shine out on A Ghost Is Born. His role is fairly transparent. What is going to draw you in at first, avant-garder, is the phenomenal guitar playing handled almost entirely by Tweedy.
My New Year’s resolution was
‘Step up to the plate and play. More guitar solos in 2005’.
Looks like Jeff Tweedy beat me to it. The solo on Hell Is Chrome sounds like it’s beamed in from another galaxy and it is completely, soul-stirringly perfect. I use that P term sparingly and mean it one hundred percent. Tweedy’s sense of melody is proven by his song writing track record but his ability to put aside the box format and constraints of playing guitar and transfer this melodic skill into his instrument has propelled the Wilco sound into a new world closer to Television or Neil Young at his most icy. Long thought of as the rhythm player in Wilco, Tweedy has indeed stepped up to the plate. But it’s the songs and (most importantly) how they’re put together and dealt with that makes the record so special.
Tweedy has spoken at length of the deconstructive writing process Wilco employ and it’s spectacularly effective here. A Ghost Is Born is a very apt title; I take it to mean the songs themselves are born and cemented as mere shadows of their ‘real’ form, as stripped back and removed as they can be without actually disintegrating. The reverence that lesser songwriters place on their efforts often shackles their ability to best do justice to their output. Wilco’s total lack of worry about diving in two footed and tearing apart their own music shows something much more than a perverse compulsion to sabotage that Warner Bros mistakenly thought they had identified when they decided to drop the band.
It shows an unflinching confidence in the quality of their songs. It’s like they are daring themselves to progressively destroy their songs more and more to see how far they can go before they ruin what they’ve made but knowing the quality is so high that the song will shine through. It shows a band on absolutely peak form, bulletproof in their collective decision-making and as a listener it’s thrilling.
Spiders apparently began life as an intricate and complex multi-chorded song. Tweedy himself says that if you played songs from Wilco’s first album and last album on an acoustic guitar there wouldn’t be much difference but it’s in the way they treat the sonic qualities of their songs that shows progression. It’s illustrated perfectly by this song, which is a great slice of pop stretched into a 10 minute long Kraut workout with the original chords supported only by Tweedy’s vocals and the musical backing reduced to a single chorded, drum machine backed, metronomic pulse interspersed with lyrical skronk guitar that Marc Ribot would be proud of. When the song finally breaks the groove and hits a change the effect is euphoric.
Take Less Than You Think as a case in point too. A beautiful song supplemented by an additional ten minutes of crackle and drone that may push the point too much but serves to further blur the boundaries of exactly who is in charge of this record. Using the somewhat crap mettarrfer of a record being an animal; lesser bands would have reigned this collection of songs in to control it and to stamp their mark on it enough to show everyone, with no doubt, that they made it and were in charge of it. Wilco ending one of their most sublime moments with 10 mins of automated noise, created by their instruments with no human input implies that, rather than trumpet their abilities loudly, they acknowledge that these songs come from somewhere else unique and that they’re not entirely in charge of their music. Like the album title it gives the feeling this album is an entity in its own right.
And when you think the album is over they deliver the warmly human Late Greats to close, which has the effect of a cute shoulder-shrug delivered after some earth-shattering revelation.
(sample lyric: ‘The best song will never get sung/The best life never leaves your lungs/So good, you won’t ever know/I never hear it on the radio/Can’t hear it on the radio‘)
I can’t think of another band who could deliver an album with two plus-10 minute tracks alongside perfect sub-3 minute pop diamonds like I’m A Wheel and not have those 2 polar opposites of composition sound like 2 polar opposites of song. With Wilco you feel they can do anything and it would all come from the same band.
Wilco fans and fans of song writing will love this record, the quality of the songs not only shines through the experimental action but is enhanced by it to a point where you honestly believe these songs are as good as they possibly could be. I’ll save them the sales pitch.
But you, Mr or Mrs left field; you have no excuse. Wilco are here to sort out your music hassles. They are even on the cover of the fucking Wire for god’s sake. And don’t give me that ‘I don’t really like the Wire’ line you loser. What’s more, when they tour the UK in March they have Nels Cline on guitar to propel Wilco to a 2 guitar line up to actually stop wars.
With A Ghost Is Born, Wilco have made a truly revolutionary record: a collection of songs that will reinforce the idea of bravery among their fans but more importantly remind us avantwankers why we love music so much in the first place.

Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.

A series of ideas. Little ones. Maybe one per track. Some very good. Tracks don’t get going. Often enough. A series of electronic palettes of sound here from Soiled, which as you may have gathered, are mostly on the brief side. Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on which side of the not-outstaying-your-welcome vs. not-developing-your-ideas-properly line you stand on. Me? Ambivalent as ever.

Opening track ‘Mindnumb’ revolves around one scuzzy drum break, filtered up and down, back and forth, distorted, clean, and Req-like in its simplistic, lo-fi delivery. It’s a fine introduction to something more developed, but not a lot more, and sadly the next couple of tracks don’t move things to the next level either. ‘Bingo Beauty’ and ‘Bad Vowel Movement at WP Primary’ are both promising, the latter coming across like the drop in a Pest tune, while the former reminds me of the introduction to something by Movietone. ‘Paranoid Conclusions No. 7’ succeeds because it gives itself a bit of space to find its own character – a pleasingly-hyperactive mashup of I Care Because You Do arpeggios, and easily the most satisfying piece here. The EP works well as a sampler showing off the way Soiled go about producing music, but it’d be great to hear them tackle some ideas at greater length.

Soiled