On the basis of this four-song first single, Liverpool upstarts The Maybes? (and yes, that is an annoying question mark of theirs) present themselves as a solid, if somewhat unexciting, take on the combined sounds of The La’s, The Jam and – like so many others – The Beatles. Theirs is a stoned world of rock and roll, livin’ it up and tight male-bonding hugs on drunken nights out to see Oasis.

The first two songs suggest, I hope, the direction that the band might go from here. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ is more Cast than The La’s, with its workmanlike writing and adherence to a well-worn have-it-large ideal. ‘Actions’, however, is happily more The La’s than Cast, with more considered and delicately rocking guitar lines twisting through some light-hearted harmonic indie rock. This is all very nice and very listenable, but it’s the two other songs here that are a sticking point for me: ‘Get On The Resin’, The Maybes?’ ode to hashish, is painfully quirky funk rock which reminds too much of the good-time nonsense of Toploader; whilst ‘Supercharged’ is an admittedly excited/excitable chunk of high energy rock-out, which unfortunately falls rather short of the Led Zeppelin/Live At Leeds heights it seems to be aiming at.

If The Maybes? can isolate where it is their music lies, and refine what they’re doing to something that seems less of a rag-bag of influences used with varying degrees of success, they have it in them to – putting it in the most patronising terms possible – win the heart of the common man. At present they seem slightly lost; but this is the first single. They should lose that question mark, though…

The Maybes?
Xtra Mile Recordings

This is fantastic – The Fore sound like they haven’t listened to any records except for a scant collection of pre-65 Beatles and Rolling Stones 45s. They’re so carefully studied in the sound and style of the Brit Invasion that it’s hard to believe that this isn’t some long lost recording discovered bricked in to the back wall of the Cavern. Each of the three songs on this demo, none of which come in at longer than two and a half minutes, seems to display a different aspect of The Fore’s obsessive reverence of a particular sound. ‘In So Deep’ is cheeky, jangly pop with melodies picked out over snappy arpeggios; ‘Love For Sale’ is a slightly slower, more reflective-sounding song with a Beatles-all-over bright guitar line driving it along; and ‘We Were Meant To Be’ goes in a more Stonesy direction, with stabs of guitar and jittery rhythms holding together some snarling, garagey vocals.

They may be forty years too late to make the most of this music, but that’s besides the point. This is incredibly authentic-sounding in its song structures, vocal and musical styles, and recording quality, and The Fore must know they’re destined for no more than tiny hipster’s clubs and underground beat venues. If they can stay away from the dreaded tribute act/wedding band situation of becoming more of a jaded parody than an exciteable, real group – and on the basis of these three songs they’ll have no problems doing that – they can’t cease to charm.

The Fore

TD Lind is a English bluesman who honed his chops with travels through Paris, Kentucky, Memphis and New Orleans. Now, that might sound like the stuff of nightmares to some – a pale-faced Englishman soaking up the histories of those who have led harder lives than he – so it’s good that ‘Come In From The Cold’ is a nicely subtle, upbeat slice of fuzzy guitar blues. Alongside the odd scrape of slide on guitar strings, the underlying, repetitive riff that forms the core of the song is overlaid with some lovely, complex fingerpicking and almost hidden drums and keyboards. Lind’s vocals are kept nice and low in the mix, and work all the better for it, as they don’t speak of years of torment and pain, but sound more like a good voice singing over a great backing. The song slowly builds to a quietly chugging density, and succeeds through seeming devoid of any connection with modern music.

Two further songs, ‘Let’s Get Lost’ and ‘I Don’t Miss You’, bring the vocals more to the fore, and lose the lead track’s smoky sense of impromptu musical thoughts accidentally captured onto tape. Straying too close at times to the unpleasantly mainstream, warbling, bland style of singers like James Morrison and – ack – James Blunt, these songs retain at least a modicum of emotional depth and musical simplicity that hasn’t been completely over-produced and polished. I get the impression that TD Lind could be pushed into the mainstream with the help of a hitmaking producer and an integrity-free manager; but that he’s not going to let that happen.

TD Lind

The worlds of heavy metal, Hard Rock, squealing guitar solos and testosterone-fuelled vocal histrionics are kind of a mystery to me. In my varied forays into these worlds – through the NWOBHM Satanic seriousness of Venom, the odd dabble into Norwegian black metal and the doom-laden sounds of Sunn o))), the metal-for-indie-kids of Le Force and The Fucking Champs, not to mention hours of sitting in pubs with Iron Maiden, Metallica or System Of A Down rumbling away in the background – I often find it hard not to listen without a certain sense of irony and cynicism.

That’s in part how I first react to this eleven-track album. It seems to tick all of the boxes: chunky, monolithic riffs; amazingly adept guitar solos thrown into any available space of each song; pained-sounding vocals that speak, I’m sure, of the ills of the world. However, despite my instinctive aversion to some of the softer, more ‘sensitive’ aspects of Breed 77’s sound – as on the piano-led ‘Look At Me Now’ (sounding to all intents and purposes like a Boyzone-go-heavy out-take) and the flamenco-tinged ‘So You Know’ – I have to admit to a certain sneaking enjoyment in most of the remaining tracks here. When Breed 77 are doing their uptempo guitar-twiddling aggressive metal thing, it’s strangely satisfying. To my uneducated ears I have to admit it sounds, at times, remarkably cliched and unoriginal, but who knows. The addition of Spanish lyrics and a few Spanish and eastern European musical flourishes make for a few interesting twists. So what I’m saying is, I suppose, that this may well be good music for you heavy metal people out there. For you pasty indie kids like myself, it might also push your buttons.

Breed 77
Albert Productions

The Fuzztones have been ploughing their determined furrow through the, uh, fields of 60s-styled garage punk since the early eighties. It’s fitting that this tribute is in the form of a compilation, as so much of the freakbeat, psychedelia and caveman-stomp garage that will have influenced them will, I’m sure, have been filtered down to them by way of countless other compilations. Nuggets, the Pebbles and Rubble series, and so many more in an endless stream of collected musical ‘artyfacts’ have brought an avalanche of once-unknown acts to new audiences.

And so it is here across these two CDs . Whilst there are some better known (nay, legendary) carriers of the garage flame on here – Jayne County, Plasticland, The Morlochs and Nikki Sudden, for example – they’re mixed in with a pile of other, less familiar names. The original 60s compilations were inevitably uneven in parts, with varying levels of songwriting skill, recording quality and experiment, and this is also true of Illegitimate Spawn. However, the 42 tracks here are shot true with an irresistible spirit and unwavering adherence to a world of psychedelic mini-skirts, whacked-out organ licks and drug-damaged mayhem.

There are many highlights for me across the two CDs. Mad Juana’s ‘Idol Chatter’ is a raga-drenched foray into mystery and stoned eastern vibes, a style continued with tracks from Gondolieri and Special Agents. There’s freaked-out punk and keyboard-heavy madness with Fuzz Faces, She Wolves and The Sextress. There’s even authentic horror-style desperation (in the vein of The Monks, The Sonics and early Seeds) from Staggers, Blues So Bad and Ravens.

There are artists from around the world featured here – representing France, Brazil, Austria, Italy, USA, England, Argentina, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Germany, Finland and Peru – and it’s impressive to know that there are so many likeminded groups still out there. This is a great compilation, and the highest praise I can give it is to say that it lines up totally comfortably alongside my Pebbles, my Rubble and my Chocolate Soup For Diabetics records. These bands are totally out of step with modern music, and they’re all the better for it.

Sin Records/The Fuzztones

I’ve mentioned a couple of Northern Star Records-related things on diskant.net before (here and here). They’re a weirdo experimental/psychedelia/nuthouse label with connections to and releases from The Telescopes, Stevenson Ranch Davidians, Silver Apples and Brian Jonestown Massacre, so it’s good to know that on 15 November they’ll be launching an MP3 shop so that all you heads can get your lysergic hits in a download style.

Find out more here.

Following on very much in the style established on their previous album Alone In The Bright Lights Of A Shattered Life, this new set from Library Tapes is outstandingly bleak, minimal and intimate. I imagine that Library Tapes’ David Wenngren and Per Jardsell have never heard the theme from Oliver Postgate’s Bagpuss, but the twelve tracks here share its childlike, eerie sense of atmospherics, of loss and of glimmers of hope.

In terms of developing the musical themes from the first album, there is nothing revolutionary or particularly new at work here – both albums are made up of brief glimpses of melody; circular, echoing piano lines laid simply and effectively over a variety of scratchy, time-worn found sounds. But as part of a continuing meditation on the purity of melody, it’s hard not to be affected by these scribbles of music. At worst, the tracks pass by and leave me with nothing more than a melody hanging in my mind. At best – on the sinister, piano-less swells of sound of ‘Departures (Burning Saints For Your Own Sins)’ for example, sounding like an offcut from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, Volume Two, and the beautifully chilly ‘Feelings For Something Lost (pt. 2)’, Library Tapes are almost unbearably heartbreaking and effective.

This is true winter music in the same way that Rachel’s and Hood are winter music – lonely, emotional sounds that reverberate deep within. I don’t know what’s in the water at Library Tapes HQ, but it brings out some of the most honest and heartfelt, yet simple, music I’ve heard in some time.

Library Tapes
Resonant

Short and sharp, Dartz! bring in two songs on this single in under five minutes. You’ve got to love those song lengths on yer pop singles. Sharing the jerky, excitable structures of bands like The Futureheads and Smokers Die Younger, Dartz! infuse their sound with some of the circular guitar lines that marked out the later work of the sorely-missed Yummy Fur, but it’s slightly marred by vocals which are very much of the shouty-post-hardcore now. For me, ‘St. Petersburg’, for all its brevity and grooving syncopation, isn’t as successful as B-side ‘X-RayBex’, which uses the twin-vocal style to greater effect, reminding of the impassioned pop stylings of Cat on Form. Whilst the bands I’ve mentioned here have a certain idiosyncratic style that defines them as individual outfits, Dartz! still seem to be scrabbling to find a sound that’s their own. I get the feeling that they may get there in the end.

Dartz!
Xtra Mile Recordings

The confusingly-named Voicst (apparently the name is South African slang for ‘manic energy’, fact fans) offer us two tracks of spirited, melodic indie rock that walks the tightrope between quirky noise and mainstream-approaching Rock Music. ‘Acts Of Fire’ shares a certain style with outfits like Soulwax, Bettie Serveert and the Dandy Warhols – riff-led guitar lines tightly holding together pleasingly straightforward structures. B-side (if such a thing exists on a download single) ‘Sgt. Gonzo’ continues in a similar way, yet ramps up the good-time nature that seems to be at the heart of the band. While some of the odder elements of Voicst’s music – the quirky lyrical arrangements here and there, the hints of darkness around the edges – could lead to a Breeders-style process of derangement, they seem happily entrenched in a sure-footedly normal place. At times, on the basis of these two songs at least, there is a certain reliance on a particular riff to carry a song, but if nothing else Voicst are good and positive sounding. Proper ‘going-out’ music, at least if you’re on your way out to the indie disco.

Voicst
Duurtlang Records

I’m mentioning these three releases in one go here, as in my mind Boyracer and Beatnik Filmstars are irreconcilably connected. They were two of the bands that throughout the early to mid-nineties helped to develop my musical listening into directions away from the pure indie-pop I was obsessing about beforehand. Both bands have their roots very firmly in indie-pop; Beatnik Filmstars springing from the ashes of the dearly missed Groove Farm, and Boyracer being a mainstay of the fanzine/cassette scene that was so healthy at the time. And both bands are still producing music now, albeit with a more ‘relaxed’ frequency of releases.

Beatnik Filmstars’ ‘In great shape’ is their first album in seven years and continues in their familiar, but effortlessly enjoyable style of previous releases. Lo-fi guitar sounds, sardonic-sounding lyrics and the odd (and unfortunately, slightly dated-sounding) samples are smashed together with an unquestionable sense of melody and pop perfection. This is a band that have gone through a variety of phases in their career – from the early shoegazing of ‘Maharishi’, through the angrified ‘Laid back and English’ and the bizarro ‘Astronaut house’ to the current reversion to pop simplicity of this album. It’s almost the Groove Farm played through a slightly bitter, slightly experienced filter – quick glimpses of songs flit by in the 23 tracks here, interspersed with more reflective moments and the odd foray into lo-fi dance irony. Whilst there’s a lot to take in here, and I feel that some of the more throwaway tracks could have been, well, thrown away, it’s hard not to like Beatnik Filmstars at their fizzing best. Fortunately there’s still enough of that here to make me happy.

Boyracer’s musical trajectory started with noise-drenched pop songs, the feedback and scream-drenched days of their early singles calming down into a gliding style (yet still covered in feedback) as on ‘More songs about frustration and self-hate’, then experimenting a little in their own way before maturing into a pure, modern-style indie-pop band. ‘A punch up the bracket’ solidifies Boyracer’s status as an international pop band – rushing through 21 tracks that take in the American-style pop often released on labels like Slumberland and the band’s own 555, cutesy Japanopop with cutesy synths and squawked, girly vocals, and what used to be known as ‘perfect pop’ when it was coming out of France, Bristol, Scotland and indeed everywhere some years ago. Like with the Beatnik Filmstars, it’s all held together with an undeniable charm and a distinctive style.

Both albums are a welcome respite from the RAGE and ANGER that seems so connected with modern independent music these days…

555 Recordings
Beatnik Filmstars
Boyracer

Footnote one: I’m erasing the memory of a recent Beatnik Filmstars Oxford show from my mind, lest in damages my long-held love of the band. Seeing them looking tired and bored whilst dragging themselves through a short set in front of ten people isn’t, perhaps, the best way to experience them.

Footnote two: The 75-track compilation (75 tracks!) ‘Punker than you since ’92’ is somewhat essential to me, being in equal doses an enormous hit of nostalgia – with all of the songs on those old 7″s and flexis that I rarely dig out these days – and an impressive overview of a band that’s managed to keep it together for more than fifteen years.