The mainstream-ish independent plundering of eighties style continues apace; here come At The Lake with two extremely Bunnymenesque mini-epics of swooping, reverb-laden indie rock. I’m jaded by the constant reminders of music gone by than I hear in so many ‘new’ songs, so all I can genuinely muster about this is to say that it’s not bad. It pushes some buttons, venturing slightly into early Stone Roses territory in its guitar lines, but I’m struggling to hear anything new or truly dynamic at work. Of course, the Stone Roses weren’t entirely new and dynamic themselves, and maybe At The Lake are just in the wrong place at the wrong time – for this is perfect early-nineties indie disco music; fodder for grown-out fringe-bobbers and hands-behind-back swayers. The finesse and sheen that these two songs display is arresting enough to provide a pleasant diversion, but give it ten minutes and I doubt I’ll be humming them to myself.

Pop Fiction
At The Lake

If diskant operated any kind of ratings system for its reviews, this album would get the five star treatment. For a debut, this is incredibly competent and confident music. It’s as if they’ve drawn up a list of the musical buttons to push in order to get me going, and worked out how to combine their effect into a 45-minute mini-epic which I’m fast becoming obsessed with: Spacemen 3; Stereolab; The Velvet Underground; The Workhouse; Slowdive; Galaxie 500. I’m not interested in any accusations of throwback shoegazing copyism which could be levelled at this album, its quality transcends any such shallow and lazy comparison. Over a relentlessly repetitive backdrop of monochord guitar mantras, Sennen build up textured and whirling melodic sounds which are constantly one step away from breaking free into beautifully chaotic noise. Some perfectly-pitched West-Coast-bliss lyrics top this off, resulting in timeless and affecting music. The depth and quality of each and every song on this album will, I hope, see Sennen propelled to the eager audience they deserve.

Hungry Audio
Sennen

Pointless review of the year, number one…

…because I doubt this release will still be available by the time you read this, being a limited edition of 33 copies! It’s a one-sided 12″ LP with a beautiful etching on the flip, along with a lathe-cut 10″, packaged inside a card envelope tied up with twine. You have to love those production values. And what of the music, you ask? Well, for the most part it’s inept death metal recorded, seemingly, on a very cheap four track, and for the rest of the time a combination of dumb low-fi hip-hop and out-there folk which makes Sentridoh seem like the pinnacle of recording finesse. Is it any good? Well, who knows. Maybe if you’re in the right mindset (that mindset being drunk, angry, alone and in need of some light relief). It does include the lyric ‘You’re gonna break your back / You’re gonna break your back / I hope you break your back / DIEEEEEEE’… which has to count for something.

Rock is Hell
Nate Denver’s Neck

This is a beautiful and nifty-looking little CD in a miniature sleeve. It makes me feel most giant-like. The three tracks on here seem to me like fairly close cousins to the music on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, vol. 2; moody-sounding, sparse ambient instrumentals with a general lack of apparent beats. First track ‘The Beauty of Repetition’ is a wonderful 9’31” series of drones, which enveloped my ears and warmed up my chilly car this morning. As the CD goes by, the edge (for me) is slightly taken off with the introduction of more structured melody and rhythm, making things more FSOL than Sunn o))), to put it ham-fistedly. But what a great little item this is! A compact twenty-minute blissout in a pocket-sized edition for those with tiny pockets.

noground-r

Smooth-edged melodic independent pop music of the kind which America seems so proficient, this CD is almost defiantly removed from the ongoing vogue for violent, aggressive and dissonant underground music. The eleven tracks on the album chime and twinkle, with upbeat, clean guitar lines skipping across soft drum patterns at odds with the wistful and heartfelt vocals. This music evokes bands of a different era – McCarthy, the Pale Fountains, even Felt – but it is of course timeless. At times the addition of synths, brass and spoken word can bring things to a fearfully glossy place, but at the same time I can’t fail to love the simplicity and purity of a band like this. There will always be many such bands producing pure pop music, but this one has a grasp of melody, arrangement and brevity which helps them to poke out above the crowd.

Bird in Box Records
The Dalloways

This is an incredibly bleak, but incredibly beautiful CD. The perfectly-chosen cover photograph of a blurred electrical structure sitting in its environment, reproduced in monochrome, reflects the music within. Heavily reverbed, simplistic piano and guitar melodies are enveloped in found, effected naturalistic sounds to create a windswept intimate music. A little like the more abstract parts of Godspeed!’s F#A#Infinity, this is resolutely solitary listening. Like the best dark, chilly music there is, Library Tapes inject shards of hope and prettiness, keeping well away from repetitively moody textures. The seven tracks making up 33 minutes here are like notes scribbled in the margin of music, leaving the listener to join up the dots and read between the lines.

Resonant
Library Tapes

As a result of hearing this album, in my mind the collective record collection of The Mutts is made up of nothing but New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Hellacopters, Black Sabbath and Cramps records. Not that that’s a particularly bad thing, as it’s resulted in this set of barnstorming rock and roll songs which rarely lets up its barrage of growling vocals and riff-heavy slabs of overdrive. This isn’t a clever, intricate or delicate album, but I don’t expect that it’s supposed to be. There isn’t the sheer power of Part Chimp or Hey Colossus on display, or the authentically grimy feel of the Stooges or MC5, but perhaps that’s not what the Mutts are after. If they’ve tried to produce a straightforward, no frills rock record that sounds great in the car as you pull into work, windows down, playing it loud, to try and make out you’re a pretty cool guy and not a faceless office drone, they’ve succeeded.

Fat Cat Records
The Mutts

I’ve been putting off writing about this album for ages. There’s such a gargantuan collision of styles on display here that it’s hard to know where to begin. Over the course of ten tracks, Capillary Action display elements of King Crimson’s kooky song structures, the Fucking Champs’ NWOBHM-drenched metallic gleam, Lightning Bolt’s clattering chaos and disorientation, the chunks of rock favoured across the Oxes/American Heritage/Don Caballero axis and – more surprisingly despite all of that – Mike Oldfield’s pastoral mutterings and any number of cheese-laden jazz-lite conspirators. Initially, I found this a difficult album to get through – at first listen it’s nigh-on impossible to get a handle on who Capillary Action really are, if not simply a duplicator of musical styles. This seems genuinely to be an album which benefits from repeated plays, and I think I finally get it after many spins: the album works as a whole, and should only be taken as such. The high quality parts of the album far outshine the low, and ultimately this is more than a collection of Fragments.

Pangaea Recordings
Capillary Action

I’m not on the payroll for Wäntage USA, in case my continual reviewing of their releases seems suspicious. They just keep releasing stuff that I want to give some wider exposure. Anyway. This five-track, thirteen-minute CD sounds like it was recorded five hundred miles underground in a lava-filled bunker. To strip The Pope down (no religion-baiting pun intended) would be to reveal, maybe, a pretty average hard rockin’ grunge outfit. They have pounding drums, riffs emerging out of sludgey, overdriven guitar lines, and yelping, tortured lyrics. What gives them their edge – on this recording, at least – is the incredible noise they’ve piled on top of everything. It’s all feedback, grime and intensity. I’d be interested to see the more Wolf Eyes-like direction they edge towards with some more abstract mid-song passages, but then again, I’d be interested to see them continue to batter the hell out of music, existing in their own peculiar fuzzy pit.

Wäntage USA
The Pope

Just read this, about recently-reviewed Cadillac’s recent gig:

“If ever there was a baptism of fire for any band, it would have to be Cadillac on Wednesday evening. Playing their first ever paid gig in the UK, the Norwegian rockers and crew, all smiles after a storming gig at the Brixton Windmill in London, left the venue armed with their evenings earnings of just £26 only to be held up at gunpoint!

Although they survived the ordeal without lasting injury, they lost all the money they received for doing the show. In an effort to cheer themselves up, they’ve spent the afternoon eating pizza, presumably on their cash cards. Bless.”

Blimey!
Looking forward to my band playing at Brixton Windmill next month…