Another Form of Relief

I really need to stop writing posts that have Kate Nash in the title, or else I risk sounding like someone slightly obsessed or something. I promise you this is the last one for now though. Anyway, despite the previous post, Kate Nash didn’t actually make it down to Kent to play in the Electric Gardens heats. Which sucks for her, and sucks for me as I didn’t even get to see her play once, let alone at the festival. I did however manage to catch a glimpse of her when she arrived at the Beacon Court Tavern, even if this was unfortunately twenty minutes after the competition had ended. She was hanging around outside for a little bit afterwards too, and I would have gone and spoken to her if I had, you know, a spine.

On a more positive note, I did get to see a fantastic little band called Quadmire, who deserved to win the competition. They performed solidly, had some awesome songs and had a nice, almost 60s like sound, complete with harmonising, giving them a completely different edge to most of the local type bands that I end up seeing. The lead singer was really pleasant too, although I wish I’d taken him up on his offer to write down their website address as I can’t find the bloody thing now. So if anyone can find their Myspace page or whatever, that would be very cool. Edit: Found them at last. The name is Quadmyre, not Quadmire, which explains not being able to find them. Stupid Beacon Court website.

I was also going to do a regular post type thing this evening, but I’m absolutely exhausted, so it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow.

You’ve all heard my rants about how much of a cultural wasteland it is down here in Kent. Too close to London to get our own shows, too far from London to make travelling there easy. As such, it was kind of nice to discover that one of the artists I’ve written about previously will be playing in a venue pretty close to me.

Kate Nash will be playing at the Beacon Court Tavern in Gillingham this Thursday (28th June, doors 8pm, £2 entry) as part of the heats to get a slot at the Electric Gardens Festival. It’s kind of sad that she has to go through this stage rather than be able to go straight to the festival itself, but there you go. Obviously all of this will be made better if she gets a slot at the festival, but at least there’s this show to look forward to at least.

Now I’ve never been to the Beacon Court Tavern, so I have absolutely no idea what it’s like. I also don’t know if anyone else can go, but I will be resorting to bribery to get others there if it’s required.

The Beacon Court Tavern: Website

MP3 Kate Nash - The Nicest Thing (expired)

MP3 Kate Nash - Dickhead (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash - Caroline’s A Victim (expired)

Apologies for the low quality of the last two songs, but 56kbps is all that’s available.

I’ve talked about ‘The Nicest Thing’ in the past, and I also spoke about not really liking any of her other songs. I’ve been back to them a number of times since then and they have all grown on me to a certain extent. All of these songs sound pretty rough, thanks to both the low bitrate and the bargain basement production, but the songs themselves still shine through. ‘Dickhead’ is a great piano song once you get past the title, and ‘Caroline’s A Victim’ is a dabble into electronica, which doesn’t entirely work, but it’s interesting to say the least.

Below you’ll find a live performance of ‘Birds’ from her show in Brighton a while ago. I’m not usually a fan of embedding Youtube content very much, but this song ranks up there with ‘The Nicest Thing’ for me, and it’s the only way that it seems to be available at the moment. Her facial expressions throughout the song really make the whole thing too.

Kate Nash: Myspace

Note: This post will contain spoilers for both X-Men: The Last Stand and Hard Candy. If you haven’t seen one or both of those films and want to keep their content a surprise, it’s probably best you stop reading now.

Thanks to the joys of the Cineworld Unlimited card, I’ve been getting to the cinema a lot more than I used to lately. In the past few days alone I’ve seen both X-Men: The Last Stand and Hard Candy. I was going to go for a third and see Thank You For Smoking too, but that was quite a drive away and I got lazy. Something struck me on watching the two former films though: Morality in films is a very strange thing.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to be some Mary Whitehouse-esque rant about film is corrupting our children and the such. Quite the opposite. I’m entirely opposed to any kind of censorship whatsoever, and find cases that cite media influence on crimes to be frankly laughable. As such, nothing in the following piece should be seen as a criticism of the content of these films, rather an observation.

We’ll deal with X-Men first as that’s the simplest example. I don’t know how it struck most people, but even while watching the film, I couldn’t get out of my head just how backward the whole exercise is. In the film, a corporation creates a “cure” for the mutant gene, which would theoretically allow all mutants that took it to live out ‘normal’ lives. Going into this, I would have expected this to have been seen as the villian of the film, but the actual setup was completely different. As the story progresses, the government makes the cure available for anyone that wants it, and we see scenes with mutants queuing to take it while others protest outside. Obviously this is designed to invoke images of abortion clinics and the such, but it never quite pulls it off.

This is mostly because through all of this, Magneto (the film’s actual “villian”) is leading a crusade against the “cure”, arguing that mutants are perfectly acceptable the way they are. As the story continues, he begins to take direct action against the corporation behind the cure, which is when the X-Men step in and rather than aid their fellow mutants, defend the corporation from Magneto’s attack. Now all of this would be all well and good if Magneto was just a paranoid old man who felt that this was the end of his “race”. While the cure is never made compulsary during the film, one gets the impression that this will eventually come, the government quickly going back on their word and using the cure as a weapon against mutants. All of which leaves us in a position where Magneto was actually correct all of the way through, and while his methods may be morally wrong, his entire motive is to save his race. To put it another way, if this were a Holocaust film where an ethnic or social group were being wiped out, the military that marches in and puts a stop to it would be seen as the heroes. In this film, he and his group are the enemies, leading us to a dangerous situation where the X-Men seemingly trust the actions of the government. You’d think after seeing the first two films, they would know far better than to do that.

Our second film with interesting morality, but one that pulls it off far better, is Hard Candy. It’s not a pleasant film, but it is one that made me think, and that’s the main thing I want from any film. In the film, we see Jeff, a 32 year old man, meet Hayley, a 14 year old girl, after they chatted for a while on the internet. At this point in the film, it’s clear who the villian is. Even though neither character seems particularly dislikable at this stage, more misguided, it’s obvious that Jeff should know far better, and he knows full well what he is doing is wrong.

The film challenges the audience far more once Hayley returns to Jeff’s house though. It slowly dawns that she is manipulating him just as much as he is she, and after a brief period, she manages to drug him. He wakes up tied to a chair, and the following hour or so consists of Hayley torturing him, both psychologically and physically. She claims to be doing this because she thinks he murdered another girl. Did he? The film remains pretty vague on this. He was associated in some way, certainly, but if he was just a helpless observer as he claims, is what is happening right? So in all of this, who is the bad guy? The rug has been pulled out from underneath us entirely. Is Jeff still the bad guy when he’s the one being tortured in front of us? He’s unquestionably done bad things, but does he deserve this? And what of Hayley? We’re presumably supposed to feel sorry for her in the early scenes, but it’s hard to sympathise with anyone who could do that kind of harm to another person. The film itself seems to remain entirely neutral on this point, and that’s what works to it’s favour. It allows us to just observe the proceedings, without ever really taking sides, and that is what leaves us feeling uncomfortable. We’re used to film telling us what to think that when left to ourselves, we have no idea.

It’s been more than a day since I sat through Hard Candy. I still can’t shift it from head, and I still can’t form an opinion on what I saw. As a film, it’s incredibly well made, save for a lacklustre final sequence that relies too much on chance. Did I enjoy it though? Probably not. Yet part of me wants to go back and watch it again. There aren’t many films that can cause that kind of conflict, and I’m glad it doesn’t fall back on easy answers. Unlike X-Men, which told me exactly what to believe, even if on closer examination, it’s a massively flawed argument.

So which of these is a better film? I guess it depends on what you want from a film. X-Men was the more immediate and entertaining of the two. Hard Candy was better made and more thought provoking. Even though I still don’t know what to think about it, it at least made me think, and I’ll take that on any day.

Battle are about the biggest “local” band playing at Electric Gardens. Even though they seem to consider themselves as being from London, the band actually formed as Killing Moon at the University of Kent in 2003. The band got off to a low key start, playing such local haunts as The Venue, The K-Bar and Dame John Gardens in Canterbury. All of which are wonderful places, or the only places big enough to house bands in all of Kent, depending on which side you wish to believe. The band gained popularity by playing a bunch of London shows, and have now reached the point where they can actually get singles into the UK charts. Granted at number 60, but it’s an impressive feat nonetheless.

We may as well get the lame comparisons out of the way now, so yes, Battle do sound rather like Bloc Party, particularly on ‘Tendency’. Please don’t let that put you off though, as it sounds like one of those rare good Bloc Party songs. The guitars jerk all over the place, the bass drives and the drumming keeps it all in line. All this while Jason Bavanandan belts out words in such a manner that it sounds like it could actually be physically painful for him to do so. This adds to the urgency of the song though.

As for the song itself, it’s a suitably downbeat tale about how crappy life can be at times. “I know I dance like a drunken arse / Every weekend, it’s my only vice / Let me drink myself to death / To forget about the rent” asks Bavanandan, sounding as if it’s what he really wants to do. Ultimately though it’s a love story about loving a girl, but knowing that it’s probably not going to work out as it only really goes one way. I like the whole realist point of view this gives the song, rather than the usual optimism or complete pessimism that usually appears in songs of this nature.

MP3 Battle - Tendency (expired)

Battle: Website || Myspace

I’ve made no secret of my disliking of the World Cup and the hysteria that surrounds it. I don’t get any of it if I’m honest. I’ve mentioned my issue with the stupid flags that people have on their cars previously, as well as hundreds of other dumb things you see during tournaments like this. I’ve tried ignoring it, which doesn’t work too well. I’ve even tried to understand it, but no matter how much I try, it’s still 23 men chasing a ball around some grass for a couple of hours. It does absolutely nothing to me, and I fail to see why I should care.

I don’t have anything against football in itself. I find it pretty pointless, but I feel that about all sport. I guess my point is that I’m not singling out football because of the game itself. I don’t understand, but I’m okay with that. People want to play, that’s fine. People want to watch, that’s also fine. I do however take issue with how intellectually bankrupt a large portion of the fans are.

I could very easily sit here and rant about the rioters in Germany, but that’s just far too easy. I haven’t paid all that much attention, but I haven’t seen news reports about any other groups of fans rioting in the streets. It seems to be a wholly English thing to take football far too seriously. I quickly discovered this first hand when I found myself in a pub at the start of the England match against Ecudor yesterday afternoon.

Now I have a “problem” where I feel intellectually superior to nearly everyone around me. I use problem in that context because apparently it is one, even if I don’t see it as such. It’s not a particularly arrogant attitude, I just look at most people around me and know that I’m smarter. I also realise that somewhat contradicts the arrogance part. I can’t help it though. People are largely dumb. You can’t have an intelligent conversation with most people because they either don’t understand or don’t care. Try talking politics, culture or literature to people and they will stare at you blankly. Bring up the World Cup or Big Brother and they can engage with you for hours. Assuming you don’t mind turning your brain off of course.

Anyway, back to the pub, and the mentality of the people there actually scared me. Some people were bellowing “Come on England” at the television, as if magically these words would be transported to Germany and would help the team. Others seemed to bury their head in their hands at something even close to a goal, which I thought was the point, but they seemingly couldn’t bear to watch. Worse still were those trying to start chants in a pub. I mean, seriously, what is the reasoning there? Oh, and let’s not forget the way any objectivity goes flying straight out of the window. If an Ecudorian player committed a foul, outrage ensues, but if an England player does the same thing and gets caught, the referee is “having a fuckin’ laugh”. The whole exercise was so wilfully ignorant that I didn’t know whether I should be terrified or laughing.

I only made it until half time when I had to flee the place in search of some kind of intellectual stimulation as I could feel my brain cells wasting away while sitting in there. During the conversations I’ve had with people, I shouldn’t feel this way largely because I should “take pride in my country”. If this is what pride in my country represents, I’d rather not. Unless of course my country wants to return the favour by taking pride in something important. I think I might be waiting a long time for that one though.

MP3 Arctic Monkeys - Riot Van (expired)

I first wrote about Brakes back in april, but seeing as they are one of the bands I’m looking forward to most at Electric Gardens, it seems right to cover them once more. Best of all, I recently discovered that they have made a couple of the b-sides from last years ‘Ring A Ding Ding’ EP availble for download.

Brakes are a band that like to try a little of everything. The band members are all from other bands. Their songs shoot from country to punk to disco. They line up songs about the music scene next to covers of Johnny Cash. They also power through 16 songs in less than 30 minutes on their ‘Give Blood’ album. To say they are interesting is an understatement to say the least.

These two b-sides aren’t as bold as some of the album songs, but are worthy nonetheless. ‘Shut Us Down’ essentially sums up their attitude when it comes to making music (”I’ve got an electric guitar and a bottle of warm beer / I’ve got some funny ideas about what sounds good”) and like many of their songs, clocks in at only a little over a minute. Despite this, it still manages to feel like a complete song, rather than a fragment, something a number of their songs. ‘If I Should Die Tonight’ is a longer song, and a far more restrained one, seemingly covering something of a bad drug experience. Personally I prefer the slightly more rocking version of Brakes, but both of these songs are still rather good.

MP3 Brakes - Shut Us Down (expired)
MP3 Brakes - If I Should Die Tonight (expired)

Brakes: Website || Myspace

While browsing around looking at some of the bands that will be playing at Electric Gardens in august, I happened upon the page of Absentee. This is a band that describes their sound as “Leonard Cohen singing from the trouser backed up with a mix of incompetence and occasional surprise”. Go on, tell me you wouldn’t be the least bit curious after reading a description like that.

So I started to listen to ‘Something To Bang’. It all started normally enough, all garage band guitars and bassline, and then, forty five seconds in, the vocal kicks in. That’s the point where I discovered they really weren’t kidding with the Leonard Cohen thing. Lead singer Dan does have a voice that evokes Cohen, and more importantly, a voice that isn’t usually found in indie rock. Indie rock is often made up of those who can’t really sing but really want to rock out, and the music will disguise that well. The people with the stronger voices seem to go on and do other things. This isn’t exactly a perfect rule, but it fits quite a lot of the time. I guess my point here is that there’s a voice here that you don’t commonly hear. The closest contemporary comparison I can think of is David Berman, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.

As the song progresses, more musical flourishes enter. There are keyboards in here, sneaky little riffs and a bunch of other fun stuff. All of this results in an indie-country-rock type sound that you don’t often hear coming from bands on this side of the Atlantic.

MP3 Absentee - Something To Bang (expired)

‘Something To Bang’ is taken from ‘Schmotime’, which was released last month on Memphis Industries.

Absentee: Website || Myspace

I haven’t written in a couple of days as I’ve been trying to sort out a bunch of site related stuff, some things directly connected to this blog, others not so much. A few days ago I wrote that I was considering setting up a regular (ie. personal) blog like I used to write in the ‘good ol’ days’, but after playing about with that idea for a bit, I don’t have the time, nor the motivation to maintain two blogs at at time. Before anyone starts getting worried about a Nayblog occuring here, it’s the idea for the second blog that I scrapped, nothing to do with this one.

Regarding Another Form of Relief though, some changes have been occuring in what I’m trying to do with this blog. My initial attitude when posting was one of “copyright be damned”, and while I still have major issues with the way copyright law works, I’m slowly moving in the direction of making more and more of the content here entirely legal. When I first started this blog, I doubt even half of the songs I posted were freely available online, now I’d say it’s closer to three quarters. When bands only had one song available, I’d put up a couple more unauthorised ones. Of late, I haven’t bothered with that part, just relying on the available songs. As such, I’m also going to drop the Five for Friday thing that I’ve been doing. In part it was an attempt to talk about songs I genuinely have a love for, but if I’m honest, it was also an attempt to boost traffic numbers, and that’s the wrong attitude with this.

Does this mean that I’m going to become holier than thou, just posting things that are freely available? No, probably not. While that will work for the majority of posts, it doesn’t work for a few. I enjoy things like the covers posts, and as they are usually made up of non-album songs and the such, I have no real qualms in posting them. There are also times when I throw up a small collection of songs in relation to a particular event or day or something, and I think these are fun for any blog, so I’ve no real desire to stop doing that. I guess the overall attitude is that I’ll go with freely available songs when I can, but I’m not going to be 100% on that rule.

Finally, I still want to write about things that aren’t music even if I’m not writing a second blog, which means those things will go up here. Music will obviously still be the main drive on this blog, and will make up the majority of the posts, but whenever I feel like talking about something else, I’m going to. It’s my blog, and I’m free to do what I like with it. I may be alone in this, but I feel that variety adds more character to a blog anyway.

So the brief version for everyone asleep at the back: More legal songs, less dodgy ones, more non-music content.

I’ve had a lot of fun with this blogging thing over the years, and Another Form of Relief has by far been my most interesting venture. I’ve met a bunch of great people, have discovered some fantastic music, and it’s introduced me to an entire world of music writing that I never knew existed. It’s just time to do what I want with this thing, not what I think the reader wants.

We’re going to kick off our Electric Gardens Festival preview today. I don’t know how many of the performing bands I’m going to be able to get through by August 6, but seeing as I won’t feature any of the crap ones, I should be able to do okay.

Following on for my post asking for suggestions where to start the other day, I’m going to start with a band I wasn’t previously familiar with, The Fratellis.

The Fratellis are a three-piece from Glasgow, and their sound is interesting to say the least. Based on their look, I expected a pretty standard rock band, but their songs managed to surprise me. Even their more standard rock numbers have a unique sound to them, while other songs play around in completely different genres. There’s a certain freewheeling quality to all of these songs, which is showcased here in ‘Cigarello’. It’s a rambling, punchy, rock out number that partly feels like it’s just stumbled in from the seventies, and partly feels like something completely new.

MP3 The Fratellis - Cigarello (expired)

The Fratellis: Website || Myspace

As an aside, I’m noticing that North American bands are way ahead of the curb when it comes to given away mp3s of their music. I struggle to find one downloable song for the vast majority of UK bands I want to write about, but never have any trouble with American ones. I guess UK record labels still haven’t quite discovered what “that Myspace thing” is yet.

London was a lot of fun, even if I’m exhausted and blistered today. Because of this, and the fact ezarchive hasn’t let me put up any songs until now, it’s going to be a quick and simple covers post this evening.

MP3 Cassettes Won’t Listen - Cut Your Hair (expired) (Pavement)
I only found Cassettes Won’t Listen a while back, but was impressed by ‘Cutting Balloons’ a lot. Now it may seem a little risky for a new band to take an established indie classic like ‘Cut Your Hair’ and completely change it, but somehow they manage to pull it off. Turning Pavement’s freewheeling rocker into a controlled electronic piece may seem doomed from the outset, but it works. I’m sure I could assign some deep meaning about the manufactured sound of the song matching the song’s commentary on the state of the music industry, but then I’d be bordering on the pretentious.

MP3 Ben Gibbard - They Don’t Know (expired) (Kirsty MacColl)
So we come to the standard feature of these posts: a cover where I’m not familiar with the original. If I’m entirely honest, I didn’t even know or think this was a cover for quite some time. I just thought it was a Gibbard song, which is probably blasphemy to some. To me it just says that he’s picked a cover that suits him perfectly more than anything else though. Properly recorded, this would have fitted in just right with the Gibbard songs on his Home EP with Andrew Kenny. Anyway, cover or not, it’s a good song, and Gibbard has a voice that can seemingly switch on melancoly at will.

MP3 Fountains Of Wayne - …Baby One More Time (expired) (Britney Spears)
I’m actually surprised that this song isn’t more covered than it is. I know that Travis have given it a go, and there’s this version, but I’m not aware of any others. All of which is quite surprising given that, like it or loathe it (loathe myself), it is one of the defining pop songs of the 90s. This version makes it a far more restrained affair, always feeling like it’s going to kick into a higher gear at some point, but it never seems to come. Which is a shame, as other than that criticism, it really isn’t too bad. I know a lot of people have a disliking for FoW, but to me they are a great power-pop band. ‘Stacy’s Mom’ aside, which may be as big of a musical crime as the original version of this song.

For more free mp3s, don’t forget that eMusic are offering 25 free mp3s and Audiolunchbox are offering 50 free mp3s. Both of these are great deals, neither requiring any kind of commitment to get the free music.

That’s me done for now. I’ve been getting the urge again lately to start writing a regular (ie. non-music) blog again, so I might start one up again later on. Not sure why I feel the need to tell you that, I guess this is just turning into my little rambling area now. Either that or I’m extremely tired and need to go to sleep. That one seems more likely actually.