Oxfordshire bunch The Youngs Plan are an indie 5-piece and are, yak yak, rather young – this year sees them contributing a new track to the Truck Fest compilation as well as playing the marvellous weekend. Woopee!

Singer Ash Cooke* provides most of the songwriting, and has an excellent upper-range. ‘Our Getaway Car’ is a tricky but not contrived tune, serving as an example for the whole album; a shrewd balance between technicality and artifice. At times borrowing from At The Drive In and Bloc Party (the beginning of ‘Temper, Temper’ features some ace ‘choppy-guitar’ action of the latter band) but sounding original enough to fly from its immediate inspirations.

Thankfully, ‘Eveningtalk’ is bursting with an unhealthy amount of anxious, neurotic lyrics. It begins with the hyped-up energy of a beginning of an epic night out, twinned with comic-book fantasy: “the streets, this heavy concrete, so I’ll tight-rope walk the telephone wires” and the heavily ironic “tonight let’s migrate to where the bass is pumping”. The latter lyric almost achieves its object in sounding like the more cool, less ill-at-ease half of the digital generation – conveying instead is the pathos of not belonging, not fitting in.

‘Eveningtalk’ embodies the diverse kinds of twilight conversation: the hyper, rambling speeches; maniac splurges; deep, profound discussions and plain (danceable) banter. Twenty minutes in and the EP lolls itself to the end of its night-out: “now I’m tired. Everyone can stay here.”

It seems TYP are a bit of a tricky band to be in considering you’d have to literally crap in a bowl or record child-birth to create something original. Crap indie, i.e. jaunty guitars and brooding ‘situational’ lyrics indie has been done to death. But somehow they slip through this almost ubiquitous net: TYP are genuine enough to pull off the sheer complexity of the music and achieve an intelligent but not unfeeling EP.

Pascal Ansell

http://www.myspace.com/theyoungsplan

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=6hrFZjobmsk[/youtube]

*The reviewer acknowledges the fact that he shares a close (and some would say amorous) acquaintance with each of the five Youngs Plan chaps. The reviewer also acknowledges the fact that no review is ever fully objective – you could say I have a more intimate knowledge of what’s going on with the music. Whatever, TYP are good enough for me to stoop down to the level of ‘my homies’, and bribes aside, TYP are a good band like any other I’d go out of my way to review.

HURRAH, I think I have finally finished reformatting every single damn page on diskant into the new format. I haven’t been able to do any page redirects because a) my mac doesn’t like htaccess files and b) it’s so much work, but you should be able to find everything via the Features or Talentspotter indexes, or by using the handy search box top right.

Here’s some cool stuff I spotted in the archives as I toiled:

– Chris Summerlin’s masterworks; diskant gets the blues and the time he interviewed himself about Sonic Youth
– Dave Stockwell’s still-awesome and relevant guide to getting gigs
– Xoë challenging Steve of Cat on Form (now of Blood Red Shoes) to answer for their political stances.
– My favourite interviewees; Icebreaker International and Mogwai
– Excellent interviews with Zoot Horn Rollo, Ian Mackaye, Guy Picciotto, Foetus and Steve Turner

Enjoy! But hurry up, as there’s a whole stack of new content hitting diskant this weekend.

(Originally posted July 2002)

It seems like lately I’m doing all my review columns according to themes in which I group the albums by genre or some other predefined categorization. Like, last month it was heavy metal. Before that it was fusion. And the first column of the new year was the ten best albums of last year. Despite every indication that the universe is a meaningless, random place, I still attempt to find some way to compartmentalize it. Well, enough I say. I give up. I’m through fighting.

If anything, the events of September 11 have shown us that any attempt at making sense of it all is lost. My mind may scream out with a desire to organize, to systematize, to classify… but it’s a lost cause. Our universe is a random stream of floating nucleons and electrotrons that can just as easily end up in the brain of rabid terrorist as they can a harmless puppy dog. Therefore, I now offer you five record reviews that have nothing to do with each other. They share not same genre nor artists, they are totally random. And meaningless. Just like the real world.

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In the 90s the marketing department of internet service provider America Online had the bright idea of offering potential customers 28 days of service for free, knowing that providing they were able to log in and pick up their email most people wouldn’t want the hassle of switching to someone else, sticking with the service out of sheer inertia. Unfortunately AOL required its customers to have custom software on their machines in order to connect, and rather than wait for people to get wind of the offer and come to them, they chose instead to press vast quantities of floppy discs and mail them out to every address in the land, whether they owned a computer or not. Soon the AOL install disc became so ubiquitous that, for all the company’s problems, it was for doubling the size of the world’s landfills with useless floppies (and latterly CD-ROMS) that they attracted the most derision.

It’s probably far from the worst act of environmental irresponsibility committed by marketing knobs, but it was so visible since so many people found disc after worthless disc shoved through their letterboxes. There is a point to this geeky little tale, and it’s that the record industry is, to this day, similarly wasteful when it comes to mailing out promotional records for review, and although their address books contain only the names of those individuals who may be able to provide them with some publicity, be that a full-page review in the NME or a couple of lines on a blog somewhere, they put out far more than the odd floppy disc. Those of us who write about music, and especially those who do so for free, do so because we love it, and of course we aren’t going to complain about free records. But for every promo that becomes a well-played fixture of your record collection, there are at least a dozen that end up destined for the charity shop, or, worse, the bin.

The switch to MP3 downloads of review material seems like an obvious one. Unless the record comes in some unusual packaging and the whole object merits consideration, why not just provide the content that’s up for review? But the record industry has been historically skittish about downloads, fearing large-scale piracy of albums before their actual release date, so kudos is due to Fat Cat records for having the nerve to start providing promos in downloadable form, beginning with this, the debut EP from one Tom Brosseau. One can even stream each track first to get a sense of whether it’s appropriate for review before wasting bandwidth on a full download. How nice.

It’s funny, then, that the move to a new form of distribution should be launched with an album of such resolutely traditional music. Tom Brosseau’s influences are very much worn on his sleeve on this five-song EP. Opener “George Washington” in particular is a fairly lacklustre attempt to “do” Bob Dylan, and it’s telling that the nasal drawl he adopts on this track is absent for the rest of the EP, replaced by a far gentler, and less grating, vocal style. So too is the folk-rock instrumentation, most of the record adopting a simple acoustic-guitar-and-voice format before going entirely a capella right at the end.

The impression here is of a songwriter steeped in the American folk tradition. Which is, of course, all fine and well. I’m not anti-folk music. Some of my best friends own banjos for god’s sake, and play them without irony. But the problem with tradition is that it often goes hand-in-hand with a creativity-stifling dogma. Brosseau clearly has the ability to be a charmingly poetic songwriter. Track two on this EP, “Empty Houses”, in particular demonstrates the strength of his abilities in that department. But the talent that is in evidence here should be finding a unique voice for itself, and there is disappointingly little evidence from this EP that it is doing so. Listening to it is a pleasant, but ultimately unsatisfying experience, scattered as it is with hints that Brosseau is capable of much more.

Perhaps music reviewers should adopt a new ratings system based on what becomes of the review copy of the record after the piece as been written. If this was on CD, it would probably would not be immediately sent to Oxfam, but would be filed away and unlikely to be brought out again unless asked to review a second outing by the same artist. As it stands it’s not yet getting deleted from my iTunes library. In the event of a cull brought about by limited disc-space it may be in some danger, but it could yet be saved by the presence of a satisfying follow-up record that does its creator justice.

http://www.tombrosseau.com

(Originally posted May 2002)

Overlord note: In case you were wondering, Tuesdays and Fridays are now diskant rewind days where we’re posting up some of the amazing columns we wrote years ago that have since been unavailable online.

You know, I gotta tell ya, gang… I ‘m hip to the fact that diskant is primarily an indie music e-rag, and I try and be respectful of that, but the man who holds the knife to my throat, our beloved taskmaster, Gen. Simon Minter, has just requested – nay, demanded – that we get our new columns in right away, so I’m going to have to leave the confines of currently popular music and venture outward to ruminate on the kind of music I know best – heavy metal.

(Dig that incredibly long opening sentence, y’all. I’ve been reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft lately and let me tell you, homeslice could stretch a single sentence over three paragraphs.)

So anyway – yeah, don’t be frightened. Heavy Metal ain’t gonna hurt you. Sure, the subliminal messages may cause you to kill yourself, the satanic references may cause you to sell your soul to the netherworld, and any emulation of the heavy metal “look” may ensure you never get hired to be anything other than a gas station attendant, but otherwise, metal music is perfectly harmless. It’s got a bad reputation, but my feeling is that this poor rating has always been do more to crappy rock critics that any general opinion of the masses.*

I’ve actually got a theory of why heavy metal has always done so badly with the critics. My suspicion is that whenever a rock critic was sitting down to give a good listen to a metal album, a knock would come at the door, and he/she would open it to see a chimpanzee holding a balloon. Attached to the balloon would be a note and when the rock critic read it, they would see, “Hello. My name is Bobo. Would you like me to sodomize you?” Now we all know rock critics love to be sodomized by chimpanzees, so they would jump at this opportunity, and instead of giving the metal album on their plate a good listen, they’d quickly scribble down something like “This sucks. I hate metal” and send it off to Jan Wenner or whoever their overlord was, and then get down to all that chimpanzee-sodomizing. Of course this is just a theory, mind you – I have no proof of such activities. And I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I’m just painting a picture of such degenerate activities as a mean spirited attempt to get even with all the critics who have maligned my favorite form of music.

For example, by no means do I want you to visualize Rolling Stone‘s Jimmy Gutterman sitting alone on a Saturday Night, settling down to review Ozzy Osbourne’s “No Rest For the Wicked,” and then hear a knock and see our previously mentioned chimpanzee friend. Get such an image out of your head if it is currently residing there. (Did I mention that the chimp is wearing a clown suit?) I would wish you to focus on that no more that I would wish you to ruminate on alterna-critic Gina Arnold spending lonely hours in her bedroom, bad mouthing KISS, while intermittently pining away for a stray sodomizing primate, only to have her dreams answered by a doorbell and bobbing balloon. I beg of you, wash such iconography from you mind. Were you to continue such thoughts, you might start envisioning The Stranger‘s Sean Nelson breaking into the New York City Zoo’s Ape section when he should be giving a favorable review to Prong. Okay, that joke is quite finished, isn’t it? My point being, however, that as usual, critics speak for themselves. Regular, decent, salt of the earth fuckers like you and I, love metal. (You do love metal, right?) So I thought I’d take the time to list what I feel are some forgotten metal classics that happen to reside in my vinyl and tape collection. (What the term “Heavy Metal” means has always been a point of contention, so some people may object to my rather loose encapsulation of its definition as seen by my choices below. Generally, I think Heavy Metal can be said to include all music in the sub genres – Hard Rock (Poison, AC/DC) and Metal (Celtic Frost, Slayer.) Many will disagree with me on this and they should know I have a chimpanzee with their name on it.)

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Have you heard the new Errors album, It’s Not Something But It Is Like Whatever? It’s very good. It came out last week and they launched it with a gig at the new Stereo on Friday which I managed to drag myself out of the house to attend (and got the train in for free – in your face, SPT!)

First on were Gummy Stumps who I had not heard of before though I recognised their faces. By half way through their first song I hated them and wanted to kill them. By the third song I realised their frontman was the greatest loud drunken shouting man since at least The Magnificents and started to enjoy myself, People Being Loud and Ridiculous being one of my favourite genres. Their songs consisted of about 5 guitarists playing completely different things (impressive, as they only actually had one guitarist), some kind of groove, and aforesaid man shouting stuff off a sheet of paper he was holding. I’m not sure what he was shouting but he seemed to think it vital. He finished each song by bawling THANK YOU at us. I’m not sure I want to hear anything they might put on record, or even see them play again, but I’m glad they exist. I do think they have missed their point in time, which was surely to have a shoddily packaged 7″ out on Slampt but there you are. I’m not even going to look up any information about them on the internets because I DON’T WANT TO KNOW. THANK YOU.

After that were Copy Haho who are fast becoming my third, or maybe fourth, favourite band in Scotland. Hailing from my old neck of the woods in the North East of Scotland, they have that dogged will to succeed, or at least escape, that you often find in bands from small places. However, it’s coupled with youthful enthusiasm and a nice mix of self-assurance and humour that makes them very lovable. Oh yes, and songs. Really good wordy songs with hooks and noise and energy and structure (lucky you can listen to them on their Myspace). Despite a few sound issues, they were on good form and I hope to see them getting a lot more attention soon. Though not before I get round to sending them some questions for diskant.

After a short DJ set of bangin’ techno from Wee Stuart Mogwai it was time for Errors, who have definitely been getting a lot of much-deserved attention lately. I must have seen them play about 7 or 8 times over the last three years and it was almost like seeing a whole new band. Most of this was due to the excellent sound – 90% of Errors gigs for me have been spent wishing the soundman would turn ths synths up and thus feeling unsatisfied. This time it was perfect, making the songs sound as they should but bigger and louder and more fluid. The reason I like Errors so much that I turn into a girly puddle of goo is that they literally do sound like all my favourite bands squashed together into some kind of super-awesome ultraband. When I’m Evil Dictator of the World, Errors will be my kryptonite. They have the heart-swelling melancholy of Hood and Labradford, the dynamics of Mogwai and all the giddy joys of those random faceless techno mp3s I obsess over for 3 weeks and then drop. Not to mention synths that go URRRRRRR (my favourite sound in the world). Anyway, enough about me. Errors have been touring a lot and seem to have finally figured out this whole live thing, being both tight and fun to watch. The old stuff has been glitched up and strung out, and the new stuff worked in seamlessly and confidently. By the time they were dragged back on for an encore, the crowd were so delirous with glee, they jumped at the invite to come up on stage and dance and the whole thing ended in some kind of non-stop party wagon fun times orgy, soundtracked by Pump, a ridiculously amazing 7 minute showcase of everything good about electronic music, and the highlight of the album.

This is where I need a clever sign off. I don’t have one. Just get the album.

(Originally posted April 2002)

Many a day will pass where I’ll be reclining in the Secret Diskant HQ (It’s location is so secret I can’t reveal to you where it is, but I will say it has a great view of the Eiffel tower) and young pups such as Greg Kitten or Ollie Simpson will approach me and say, “How do you do it, Wil? How do you get all the chicks? The birds go ape around you!” (I dunno how they found out about my dalliance with the London Zoo’s female gorilla, but that’s beside the point.) “Well, boys,” I’ll sagely reply, while taking a puff from my opium pipe, “You have to dig the right type of music. Girls don’t give a damn about all that indie-noise you waste your time with. You wanna know what gets chicks soggy? Fusion!” “Fusion?!” Greg and Ollie will say in disbelief. “That’s right, lads” I’ll say. “Nothin’ makes a woman hard like a twenty minute moog solo. Or a bass riff harmonized with a ten piece horn section. Or songs with titles like “The Struggle of the Turtle to the Sea, Pt. II*” “Gosh Wil,” Greg and Ollie will reply. “That makes perfect sense! Perhaps you could provide us with a brief review as to what you see as being some of the key fusion albums that can easily be pertained in the used record bins of your native America.”

Perhaps, I could, boys… Perhaps, I could…. Oh, you mean right now!

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Damn you, Sweeping The Nation. A mention of The Chart Show’s indie chart run-downs of the nineties and two hours later I am still watching them on YouTube. There are millions of them and I pretty much remember every single one. As a teenager, my life pretty much revolved around Wednesday mornings when the Melody Maker/Sounds/NME came out and every third Saturday morning when The Chart Show did its run down of the Indie charts and the thrill of wondering which two videos they would play. The early days were the best, when at least half the chart entries would be played over a dodgy press photo and even the two videos would be ridiculously obscure. Below is an amazing example where the two videos shown are My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3, on a prime-time Saturday morning TV show. Sadly the Bruce Willis video afterwards is cut off after a few seconds.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSR0-X6nwpA[/youtube]

Of course, the best part was the shoddy graphics and terrible ‘facts’ about the bands which became increasingly ludicrous. As the years progressed, the graphics improved, Britpop arrived and indie got more mainstream losing some of the thrill as the #1 video could just as likely be played in the ‘proper’ top 10 later in the program. It seems like an age ago, in these days of MySpace and Amazon. I’m glad I no longer have to buy all my records from adverts in the back of the NME or drag a tape recorder around the house to try and get a decent radio signal for John Peel because we didn’t have FM radio yet up North.

Of course, I can’t finish without mentioning the never-bettered Snub TV. It’s just too good to know where to start so just watch them all. Like you’ve got anything better to do.

(Originally posted February 2002)

So dig this – I’m sitting back in the Wil-crib, grinding up my new batch of Tylonel 3 for a quick snort, when I get an urgent e-mail from Diskant content producer, Simon Minter, saying he needs a new diskant column “now, as in ‘pronto’ fuckface!” Apparently the theme for all the columns this month is “the ten best releases this year.” (Or maybe it was “five best” or “hundred best” .whatever, I’m doing ten.) Now right off the bat, that conflicts with the general concept of my column which is to review obscure record classics that have ended up in the used bins of record stores.

Obviously, one year is too short a time for someone to release a record and have it end up in the bargain slots (unless they’re Meatloaf) so I plaintively pleaded with Simon to give me some leeway – “What if I reviewed the ten best used albums I purchased this past year? Is that good enough for you?” Well, ol’ Simon demurely let it pass and I set out to gather my trophies.

Did I actually buy all these albums in the past year? Hell, I dunno. I can barely remember last week. But I could have, and that’s what’s important!

Now when you’re talking about used records, “best” is a subjective term, Granted, a lot of the albums I picked up this year, really were good. I mean, they sounded good, they had good lyrics, they conveyed whatever immutable quality it is we ascribe to music that we call “good.” But some of these albums were “good” in the sense they were bad. I mean, really fucking bad. If you look at some of my choices below you’ll see what I mean. Do I really think “Oral Roberts: On Country Roads” was a good album? Hell no, I think it’s a piece of crap and I’ll probably never listen to it again. But as a testament to the absolute ludicrousness of decades past, “Oral Robert: On Country Roads” seriously blasts the competition. As such, I tried to include a little of both kinds of “good” in this list – I’ll let you figure out which is which.

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Sorry for all the banging and broken stuff around here. I have now fixed up the Talentspotter section into the new layout after it all went very screwy this morning. As I cut and pasted, I found myself re-reading a few interviews – here’s a few that caught my eye and are definitely worth a quick read:

– Lords in full on gibberish mode and Gay Against You in crazy/intelligent modes
– Pickled Egg and Gringo Records on the ins and outs of running a label
– Foals before they even had any photos, plus The Young Knives and Youthmovies before they were famous.

I am now inspired to actually get interviews completed with all my favourite new bands. Also, who should we be featuring next?