diskant is an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland and we have a whole team of people from all over the UK and beyond writing about independent music and culture, from interviews with new and established bands and labels to record and fanzine reviews and articles on art, festivals and politics. There's over ten years of content here so dig in!
I picked this CD up at a gig where Mendicant were supporting The Rumble Strips and I had managed to miss them. They say ‘Mendicant are a religious South London experience that will leave you begging for more…’
On listening, I found myself tending to agree. The nearest comparisons you can make to their sound is that it lies somewhere in the land of Beck near Mogwai. An experimental band of brothers and sisters who mix pop, old folk, rock and blues, aspiring to give an acoustic twist to urban music.
The ‘hick-hop’ of Pass That Whiskey is a steel banjo twanging danceable ditty. Next is the story of Lucio Conuela, with his steel toe high heels and silver rapier in his amber-handled cane. “I have seen and I have tasted all the things in store. I have seen and I have tasted and it left me wanting more,” Barnaby Cole and Simone Clark declare, over a plethora of skirmishing instruments played by cellist Jakob Kaye and a collaborative of varied musicians. The bluesy, brassy Butcher boy is more of the same eclectic unorthodox sound mix.
No three chord wonders these, but classicly trained multi-instrumentalists who have been playing music together for years. They employ guitars, banjos, violins, flute, cello, bass, organ and piano in their musical street fight. Mendicants are folks who rely exclusively on charity to survive. Help support their cause!
Liverpool acoustic folk trio Peter and the Wolf are comprised of a double bass player, a girl drummer and a lead singer. Their mini album Storyteller was recorded in singer Marc Sunderland’s bedroom studio.
The first thing you notice from the opening track Showdown are Sunderland’s distinctive, clear, Sting-like vocals. It’s a crisp sound that inflects up and down melodically through the songs. Drummer Donna Dosanjh populates the stop-start rhythms with her perfect percussion and ooh-ooh backing vocals.
Tommy is the tale of a space cadet who drew comets in his physics textbook. The victim of a social arrest, labelled as a broken misfit. Not much going for him you might think but Peter and the Wolf manage to make him sound appealing! In Mercy, the dual singers are accompanied by Hugo Harrison’s convivial double bass picking. Lover Scorned is a charming little torch song with a hand clapping backbeat. On Reason Sutherland declares “I don’t want a war with words or enemies. What gives you the right to speak out and slowly bring me to my knees?” Killing Time has a Feelin’ Groovy melody, backed by harmonica.
When you’re used to listening to murderous breaks and muffled lyrics, this piece of work is a real breath of fresh air. The carefully composed acoustic songs have a lovely retro feel; sort of Simon and Garfunkel meets the best of 10CC.
‘Storyteller’ couldn’t be more perfectly named. You feel you are thumbing through a child’s book, learning about quirky new characters. Musically, the bass and beats are always in perfect rhythm, they lull between fat blues and an intricate folk sound, both of which are quite irresistible. Who knows what we can expect from their full album – poetry akin to Difford and Tilbrook, with the intonation of Rufus Wainwright and the whispery offbeat loveliness of Elliot Smith, maybe? I hope so.
On starting to review this album, the name kept putting me off. I imagined some awful metal band, but when I eventually did ‘put the needle to the record’ I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, it is indeed hard-edged. Their sound is sort of rock mixed with electronic indie. A bit of Hard-Fi here, a touch of The Klaxons there and elements of the Kaisers, but mostly Kasabian, Kasabian and more Kasabian.
Tom Meighan could be on vocals on Wow, while Sparks is a more stripped-down sound. The incredibly catchy single Fountainhead boasts heavy Doctor Who riffs and soprano intoning, like Justin Hawkins at the end of every sentence. Keep on Cutting is like a goth rendition of a Buzzcocks song. She Takes Me Out is pure old style punk. It could be 1977: choppy riffs and simple lyrics. It’s likely to be a favourite with kids who haven’t heard the original material.
In contrast, Bugs starts off like something from Arcade Fire’s ‘Funeral’ before expanding into its own sound. It is by far my favourite track from the album, eschewing the heavy punk sound for layered melodies. “Flushed down the sewers of love, bugs caught in nets with spiders,” their singer spits. It’s anthemic and incredibly addictive.
The weakest song is the title track. The trite refrain “I don’t wanna live a back-seat life, gonna get a horse and make it ride,” is repeated annoyingly through the entire song which ends in distorted feedback. However, it has that stadium sound that will ensure it is a big hit…
Information has a bass-driven intro, then turns all electro with ooh-ooh lilts. By Danger to Myself and The End is the Beginning, Vatican DC are beginning to sound sure of themselves.
Vatican DC are hard to pin down. Their sound changes from song to song like they are trying to hedge their bets. Some tracks are potentially great; if they ditch some of the album fillers and develop their own style a bit more they could be onto a winner. Having toured with Bloc Party, The Rakes and The Kaiser Chiefs though, they shouldn’t have any trouble in getting to that next level. By the time you read this they could already be there.
Turning Circles is the 5th album from Scottish four-piece Dropkick. Power-pop meets alt. Country with chiming, Byrds-esque guitars and harmonic vocals. They tell everyday tales of washing up, hairs growing from nipples, getting the bus to Aberdeen or falling asleep with the TV on.
Only For Yourself is a fabulous opener, lovely building melodies reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub. The hooky refrain is “Take a walk to clear your head, from hearing over what you said. Time would make you justify and if only for yourself you question why.” Give It Back has a rockier reverberating guitar resonance. It’s a “crash crash crashing sound.”
For me the stand out track is Avenues, a classic ballad. It possesses a beautiful acoustic guitar intro. “In the summertime people cut their hair and I don’t mind if I go to the chair,” their singer Roy W. Taylor intones in part Dunedin drawl, part mid-Western lilt. It builds while retaining the delicious melody. A thoroughly memorable tale of a city that warrants repeat playing immediately it’s finished.
In Rewind there is a melodic Here Comes the Sun harmony. To Get To You quite simply gets under your skin. The banjo twanging, rockier edged Lobster exhibits their comedic side. You have to love a band that manages to mention scampi and slippers in the same song!
In Wont be There and Wouldn’t Hurt To Wait low-key lilting harmonies are slipped in between the solid power pop riffs. Black book is a standout track from which comes the lyric “Why do you keep the black book with the hidden horrors and the hated of love life and level thinkers. The motherfuckers and the stinkers.” The closer Say Nothing features low key strumming that ascends in layers with a strong defining vocal.
The album lilts along beautifully, mellower tracks feeding their more powerful cousins. You never tire of Dropkick’s arrangements, Laurel Canyon loveliness. They produce an additional twist from somewhere just when you least expect it with their banjos and lap steels. They push the alt. country genre through the mangle, together with folksy quirkiness and amusing indie pop, to produce their own brand of Caledonian Californication.
It’s been another busy couple of weeks at diskant. First up we launched the new Films blog where we’ll be writing about new and old films, DVDs, YouTube nonsense, music videos and other film-related things. It’s already looking good so go have a read (and a watch). My other big task has been working out the best way to move all our blogs over to WordPress. Blogger has been a brilliant service but it’s time to move to something a bit more professional that we have more control over. I spent the other weekend categorising all 800 odd posts on the main blog and getting quite nostalgic for days long gone. So much so that I have been trying to coax back some of my favourite diskanteers of old to write for us again. Yay! Hopefully we’ll have some more new things to show you over the next few weeks.
Other than diskant, I have been busy with family visitations, the usual crafting, baking and photography and even a bit of writing for, gasp, other places. This has made me feel a bit guilty about my lack of reviewing and interviewing for diskant this year so I have good intentions on getting things done soon. Of course, just how soon remains to be seen.
Don’t forget, if you’d like to help us figure out The Future of diskant then do fill out the DISKANT READER SURVEY. We really appreciate your feedback. It only takes a few minutes and there’s a great prize on offer!
Current listening:bis, Electrelane, Margaret Berger, Belle and Sebastian, 1990s.
diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1
Indonesia once was a colony from the Netherlands, leading to mutual influences. When Indonesia finally gained independence many Indonesians came to the Netherlands, which secured the still lasting Indonesian influence on the Dutch culture.
Just as it spiced up our food it also spiced up our music. The ‘invention’ of rock ‘n’ roll lead immediately to the invention of ‘Indo-rock’. The Tielman Brothers one of the most important, if not the most important, bands of the Netherlands,
shaped rock ‘n’roll in the Netherlands, added the necessary sex element through their great and acrobatic shows and left a vast collection of music.”
Well, you learn something new every day. Absolutely spectacular.
As mind-bending what-the-fuck acid-flashback warped terror freakout flicks go, Alexandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 opus The Holy Mountain has to be in the 95th percentile. Where to even begin…. The film’s (at times extremely) loose narrative follows a central christ-like figure and a band of oddballs on a quest for the titular mountain, and the secrets of enlightenment and immortality held by it’s nine shadowy keepers. Along their journey we are treated to an unforgettable visual feast of often grotesque and sacrilegious scenes surrounding those seeking the mountain and their leader (played by Jodorowsky). What unfolds is a vast universe of surrealism, humour, nausea, nightmare, satire, spirituality, blood and delirium. It’s difficult to explain in words the aesthetic level The Holy Mountain resides on, but suffice to say I’ve never seen anything else that even comes close.
Rather than struggling to make sense of what is being presented, and dismissing any aspects of the film which don’t have any obvious immediate or symbolic relevance, you really have to let yourself go with this one. Don’t fight it, feel it (man). Years ago I would have thought of this film as being completely overblown and far too obtuse and difficult for it’s own good, style over substance if you will. These days however, I really relish in the way Jodorowsky forces you to put as much into the film as you can hope to take with you having seen it. If you’re willing to put in the effort, a very rewarding film.
Cleverly I managed to see The Holy Mountain in the afternoon and Jodorowsky’s first film El Topo in the evening. Given the choice again, I would have liked to have seen them the other way round but what can you do, I had a rainy Sunday off and both were almost at the end of their run. The director appears again as El Topo or “the mole”, a wandering man-with-no-name figure in what begins as a beautifully shot but almost straightforward western (at least in comparison to THM). Again, the central figure has a very heavy jesus-vibe, and Christian and Kabbalic imagery is rife throughout. While there are still long sequences that don’t make any immediate ‘sense’ in a traditional way, things generally tend to subsequently come together somewhat with long forgotten elements of the film making a comeback when you least expect them to.
Again, visually this is absolutely incredible stuff, and as with THM, the scale of the production is frequently amazing. The heavy contrast between the first and second ‘acts’ is played to incredible effect, and there are moments when the bold statement on the lobby poster about this being the greatest film ever made begin to see quite reasonable.
The Holy Mountain and El Topo have both just been given a full DVD release for the first time courtesy of those excellent folks at Tartan.
