Another Form of Relief

I get through a lot of music in a month, which is probably obvious given I have to find material for this thing constantly. A lot of what I hear is rubbish. A reasonable amount is great and that’s the part that ends up being featured on the blog. There’s also a third section though: simply good music that I don’t write about for a number of reasons. This could be that I’ve just featured someone and then found a new song, or it’s an older band that everyone already knows that I only just discovered. Whatever the reason, it’s good music, so I’m going to start including it here. At the end of each month, I’m going to feature these “leftovers”. Seeing as July was such a good month for music, there’s some fantastic little songs here.

MP3 Kate Nash - Little Red (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash - The Shit Song (expired)
I’ve written endlessly about Kate Nash in the past, so I didn’t include these songs on the blog before. One is a new song, the other is one that wasn’t previously available for download. Both now are though, so they are going up here. ‘The Shit Song’ is the new one that is pretty simplistic (the chrous is basically “don’t give me shit because you’re full of it”), but it’s pretty fun, and at only two minutes, doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. ‘Little Red’ is pretty much the most developed song so far from Nash though. The piano jumps all over the place, the lyrics are the most complex so far and her voice is sounding more and more confident. The sound quality is once again pretty poor on both of these, but apparently she’ll be recording some higher quality ones soon. Which will probably give me another excuse to include them on here.

MP3 Destroyer - Your Blood (expired)
I avoided Destroyer for the longest time. It was one of those things where I had a massively wrong impression about what kind of music it was. I know I shouldn’t do that, but once you get an idea stuck in your head, it’s pretty hard to get past it. For some reason I believed Destroyer was some abstract instrumental group or something, and that kept me away. I have no idea why I thought that, particularly given that I quite like The New Pornographers. I really should have known that it was one of the guys from there, but there you go. Seems I can be ignorant too. The best part about this for me has been discovering a wonderful new project. Particularly given that I find The New Pornographers kind of dull when hearing more than a couple of songs at a time, but these songs are far more enjoyable. ‘Your Blood’ is about my favourite so far, but I’ve still got a lot more material to get through.

MP3 The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes (expired)
The Pipettes are another band that I’m somewhat late to the party on. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I first heard them a couple of years ago performing a live set on XFM, and thought they sounded great. Then I downloaded some songs and found them kind of dull. An impression that stuck even through this year’s blog explosion and excellent reviews. I heard one song the other day though and I really enjoyed it, so I got some more, and they are far better than I recall. Whether this is thanks to a change in their sound or a change in my tastes I don’t know, but I’m finding them to be an awful lot of fun now. Not quite enough to pick up the album or anything, but it’s good stuff.

MP3 Say Hi To Your Mom - Let’s Talk About Spaceships
This is something of an older song, but it’s new to me, hence why it’s here. This is one of the bands where I downloaded some songs simply because I liked the band name and song titles. They turned out to be better than I expected though, and ‘Let’s Talk About Spaceships’ is one of my favourite things that I’ve discovered lately. It has this wonderfully innocent quality about wanting to talk about stupid things instead of slightly more important issues like a relationship that’s collapsing. A lot of their songs seem to have this kind of melancoly feel to them, so they are getting a fair amount of play at the moment. It still amazes me just how many bands that are already well established that I can be completely unaware of. It does make finding new stuff very entertaining though.

There are times when I’m sold on a band merely because of their name. Sadly, in most of these cases the music doesn’t come close to matching the quality of the name. Thankfully that isn’t the case with Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse. I’m not really sure what you’re supposed to expect from a band with a name like that, but what you get is power pop that’s a hell of a lot of fun.

They are an eight piece from New York who make entirely unapologetic music. They cite bands like They Might Be Giants, Ween and Magnetic Fields amongst their influences, and claim that their sound is somewhere between Weezer, Liz Phair and the B-52s. Which may be a pretty bizarre combination for a band, but somehow it all seems to work.

‘Connecticut’s For Fucking’ is a scathing attack on the state where there is apparently absolutely nothing to do and people have to, er, make their own fun. ‘She’s A Six’ is a joyous ode to the acceptance of mediocrity, while ‘Obviously’ is just downright bizarre. It did nothing for me the first time, the whole spoken word style of lyrics not appealing a great deal, but after a couple of plays it was stuck in my head. That’s the thing with all of these songs: they might seem kind of lame or dumb when you listen, but they do seem to have an alarming ability to get stuck in your head.

MP3 Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse - Connecticut’s For Fucking (expired)
MP3 Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse - She’s A Six (expired)
MP3 Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse - Obviously (expired)

Jesus H Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse: Website || Myspace

Ben Kweller’s 2002 album ‘Sha Sha’ was one of my favourites of that year, and it’s still something I give a fair amount of play to. It’s simply a great pop album from a fresh voice. Unfortunately, his follow up, 2004’s ‘On My Way’, was a big disappointment to me. None of the songs really held my attention from it, and it just felt like a rushed out album that sounded like a bunch of outtakes from the first one.

Since then, a lot has happened to Ben Kweller. Most notably is that he’s got married and become a father. Scarily, he managed this while continuing to look like a twelve year old. I swear this man has developed a way to stop ageing. Anyway, he has a new album coming up in September entitled ‘Ben Kweller’, which as the title suggests is a somewhat introspective affair.

‘Penny On The Train Tracks’ is the first song of the new album to be made available, and so far the signs are good. The signature Kweller elements are here: a piano, a slightly shaky yet still powerful voice, and lyrics that work in both an optimistic and pessimistic manner. Added into this mix are some gleeful handclaps, and a nostalgic tale about running into people you used to know who are doing better than you now. Not the happiest of material, but Kweller never makes it sound depressing, one of his talents on previous albums. If the rest of the album can hold this kind of quality, signs are looking very good for a welcome return to form.

MP3 Ben Kweller - Penny On The Train Track (expired)

‘Penny On The Train Track’ is taken from Ben Kweller’s upcoming self-titled album, which is released September 19.

Ben Kweller: Website || Myspace

Are there any better ways to start a week than with some covers? Well, probably there are, yes, but it’s still pretty damn good.

MP3 Colin Meloy - Charlie (expired) (Shirley Collins)
Apparently Shirley Collins had a big impact on folk music, particularly in the UK, but I’m afraid that I hadn’t heard of her before getting hold of this Colin Meloy cover. She obviously holds a great deal of importance to Meloy as he released an entire album of him covering her songs. ‘Charlie’ is the kind of song that sounds instantly familiar, even if you’ve never heard the song before. It just has a kind of catchiness to it that makes it easily recognised. All upbeat, jangly guitars and words that are straight out of the 60s, and yet it all suits Meloy’s style perfectly. Now I’m not the world’s biggest Decemberists fan, mostly because I haven’t really explored them beyond Picaresque rather than an actual dislike. I like Meloy’s delivery an awful lot in everything I hear yet I rarely seem to explore more. Kind of strange, but no matter. This is the kind of deep insight you get when I have no idea what the original version of a song sounds like.

MP3 Graham Coxon - Time For Heroes (expired) (The Libertines)
I don’t like The Libertines much. I do however think that ‘Time For Heroes’ is a far better song than they deserved to create, and one of the best of recent years from a British band. There’s something not quite right about Graham Coxon covering it, and it’s hard to describe why. It’s the kind of angry song that needs to be sung by someone aggressive. It doesn’t have to be someone who particularly sounds it, but there needs to be an element where you think the singer will randomly snap and start beating the people he’s taking aim at with the words. That, or I’m overthinking this way too much. My point though is that Pete Doherty has that element, and Graham Coxon doesn’t. He’s far too weedly observing guy in the background than the one making a stand. Nonetheless, he gives this a good go, all loud guitars and crashing drums while soaked in distortion, and while not entirely convincing, it’s still pretty good. I also like to hear covers of modern songs I’m already familiar with, so it gains extra points for that too.
Edit: Thanks to Iain Baker over at XFM, I’ve now learnt that this was recorded live for a Jo Whiley session on Radio 1, which probably explains some of the roughness to the sound.

MP3 Gary Jules - Mad World (expired) (Tears For Fears)
Yes, I, like nearly every other person in the world, first heard the Gary Jules version of ‘Mad World’ while watching Donnie Darko. I know some people take issue with music being discovered in this manner, I’m a big fan of it, and have found a lot of great music simply by watching films with good soundtracks. This song was also the Christmas number one in the UK in 2003. Quite how it ended up doing so well is still slightly baffling to me, as when I was telling people how great it was back then and how it should get to number one, I was generally mocked, and didn’t think it had much of a chance myself. Somehow it did it though, despite it’s none too cheerful nature. Gary Jules turns the song into a slow burning, haunting piano song that isn’t quite as depressing as it should be.

One of the founding members of Macaca Mulatta is Chris Chinchilla, one of the original guitarists in Art Brut, one of my favourite bands, so this was obviously going to be a project that I’d be interested in. Chinchilla hooked up with Jim Rhesus of punk band ‘Rhesus’ after that band imploded. Macaca Mulatta are still developing their sound, but their current demos have a great sound to them: simple, fun guitar rock that bluntly talks about the trials of life and the music industry without ever becoming overly miserable.

‘Dancing On A Weeknight’ is a scathing attack on the state of the music industry and the way that bands are presented to us, while managing to take a swipe at hipsters at the same time. All of this comes in the kind of upbeat, witty way that it’s hard to disagree with anything that the band is saying. ‘Defeated’ is a little less cheerful, but does come with a nice refrain of not letting life get you down too much, no matter how awful it becomes. Both songs are still quite clearly in a demo stage, but with a little production they, and the band, could go on to be something special.

MP3 Macaca Mulatta - Dancing On A Weeknight
MP3 Macaca Mulatta - Defeated

Macaca Mulatta: Website || Myspace

I guess it’s kind of obvious by now that I’m something of a music fan. I mean, the fact I’m writing a music blog might be something of a hint on that one. More than that though, I’m something of a media junkie in general. Films are a big thing to me, I read a reasonable amount of books (but not as many as I’d like) and spend a lot of time with television shows. Now while this may all point to some underlying psychological condition that stops me from doing anything useful with my time, that isn’t what we’re going to talk about today. Today, it’s all about the television.

Why am I writing about this now, particularly given we’re between television seasons and absolutely nothing is on the air? Mostly because for a television fan with an internet connection and no moral qualms, this time of the year is something akin to Christmas. Around June, the television networks start sending out the pilot episodes of new shows to various critics and other media related figues, and by July, they nearly all turn up online. In the same way you can listen to the new Mountain Goats, M. Ward or Sufjan record before it ever reaches a store, you can watch the pilot of a show months before it even airs. Which again brings us to this post. Since 2003, I’ve been writing up my thoughts on these shows as they become available, and this year is no different. The only difference is that a whole different set of people will be reading (hopefully) as this is now my primary place to write rather than a personal blog that was frequented by pretty much nobody.

This is the first batch of shows that I’ve watched. There will be at least a second set of these in the future. As a disclaimer, any comments about the shows stated here may not be representitive of what finally airs. Shows often get reshot, changed, have actors replaced and various other changes before the show makes it air. Hell, some of them probably won’t even make it to air. Oh yeah, most of them are that bad.

The Angriest Man In Suburbia (CBS // Day, Date TBA)
CBS have really gone all out when it comes to comedies this year, producing a whole batch of them, even if they don’t have a place for them on the schedule. ‘The Angriest Man In Suburbia’ is one of these without a home, and if there is any justice in the world (yes, I know there isn’t), it’ll remain that way. The show follows the life of a family who have just moved to a dull suburb, and the father is pretty tetchy about just about everything. Now while this is all well and good as a premise, the execution of it is pretty awful, mostly because the characters are extremely unlikable. Sure, we all get annoyed by someone holding up a line while on a mobile phone. That’s hardly a good reason for our “hero” to destroy said phone. The episode basically plays out a series of these incidents that become less and less justified as time goes on. Add into this a “hilarious” plotline where the father’s GPS system talks to him which is straight out of ‘Swingers’ and we’re off to a great start to the years shows.

The Class (CBS // Mondays, Date TBA)
Oh good, it’s another CBS comedy. Thankfully, this one isn’t anywhere near as bad, but it’s still not particularly funny. Ethan (Josh Ritter) organises a reunion of his third grade class twenty years on. Thus we have a comedy of assembled misfits, who will no doubt go to be the best of ‘Friends’ as the show progresses. ‘The Class’ also suffers from character unlikability syndrome. This time it isn’t because the characters are bad, just that they are bland. Mostly this is because trying to shoehorn something like ten regulars into a twenty minute pilot just doesn’t allow any development, so everyone has one joke that they revolve around. Richie wants to kill himself, Kat hates everyone, Duncan still lives with his mother and so on. All of which are reasonable enough starts, but they just get repeated ad nauseum. It’s not absolutely awful, and could even be mildly amusing given a little work, but I don’t see it getting past six episodes.

Jericho (CBS // Wednesdays, Date TBA)
Finally, something that isn’t a comedy, and something that actually seemed interesting before I watched. Jericho is the name of a small town in Kansas. Jake (Skeet Ulrich) has returned home to deal with some family business. His homecoming is hardly welcomed (something bad happened in the past), and he leaves town again, only to see a nuclear explosion in the distance as he does so. This causes the entire town to be thrown into chaos as the locals try and figure out what to do with the prospect that the outside world has been destroyed. The creators of ‘Jericho’ have obviously been watching a lot of ‘Lost’. From it’s simple, white on black title screen to it’s story of a bunch of people trying to survive while cut off from the outside world to the mysteries of it’s characters, everything seems a little familiar. The plot also depends far too much on coincidence and the characters having just the right knowlege for whatever bind they find themselves in, which gets annoying rather quickly. Other than that, it’s actually rather good, but whether it stays that way will depend on how quickly it’s moves past it’s mysteries. We can’t wait a season just to find out where Jake has been (he tells people different things), or two years just to discover how bad the attack on the outside world is. While these are things that should be built up and solved over a little time, playing them out ‘Lost’ style would just become far too irritating. Also, as the characters are only aware that Denver and Atlanta have suffered explosions, wouldn’t it make logical sense for them to venture out to any surrounding towns and cities? Granted it’s a risk, but it seems unlikely that the entire country except Jericho would have been attacked. Still, it’ll probably one of the few shows I’ll keep watching this year anyway.

Our Thirties (ABC // Day, Date TBA)
ABCs turn to jump on the comedy wagon. Unfortunately, this one was so bad that I can’t actually remember a great deal about it. I remember a bunch of couples wondering how to handle their thirties (guess where the title comes from!) but beyond that, it was all pretty uninvolving. With a laugh track that made me want to throw up.

Rules of Engagement (CBS // Day, Date TBA)
It may surprise you to learn that I actually rather liked this CBS comedy focusing on two couples; one married for fifteen years and the other who have just gotten engaged. All of this is entirely down to Patrick Warburton (the voice of Joe on ‘Family Guy’). His jaded, cynical and dead-pan delivery of a man stuck in a marriage that is going nowhere is flat out hilarious. While all of the other characters are easily forgettable, Warburton’s Jeff steals the whole show, single handedly raising it something that can be very funny. While it is far from great (it crawls to a halt when Jeff isn’t around), it’s about the best of the new comedies to surface so far this year.

Runaway (The CW // Mondays, Sep 25)
I had a strong inclination to really dislike ‘Runaway’, largely because it’ll be stealing the timeslot of my beloved ‘Everwood’ next year. While The CW was able to find room for a bunch of new shows, including this one, it couldn’t find a place for one of the finest written dramas of recent years anyway. Which instantly put it as a disadvantage in my eyes. Somehow though, during the course of it’s 45 minutes, it managed to win me over. Not entirely, because I don’t think the premise can work over the long term, but enough to make me intrigued to see more. ‘Runaway’ follows a father (Donnie Wahlberg) who goes on the run after apparently being framed by someone for murder. So far, so ho hum, but the caveat here is that he’s doing it with his wife and kids in tow. They all move to the small town of Bridgewater, Iowa and try and make a home for themselves without letting slip they aren’t who they are pretending to be, while the father tries to find a way to clear his name. Obviously obstacles get in the way (mother gets pulled over by cops, the neighbour works from home so sees what they do, son tries to phone girlfriend back home etc) which are handled reasonably enough. The problem here is that it’ll be impossible for them to keep doing this week after week. Given how useless they are at keeping their cover in the pilot, it’s only a matter of time before they would realistically slip up. If the creators run with that, and we see them move from town to town, it could be pretty interesting, but given the establishment of local characters, I don’t see that happening, given the show a life span of a year at best.

Shark (CBS // Thursdays, Date TBA)
If you’re familiar with ‘House’, you’re already familiar with ‘Shark’ if you just move the setting to a court room. Sebastian “Shark” Stark (James Woods) is a brutal defence lawyer who will do anything to make sure his clients win. This is until he suffers a crisis of conscious after one of those clients kills someone after he gets them off. He goes to work as a prosecutor for the government, and this is where everything turns into ‘House 2′. He’s assigned a bunch of new lawyers as his team, all of whom seem to dislike him, but respect his ability. Hell, even their characters are like the motley bunch on ‘House’. There’s the District Attorney woman (Jeri Ryan) who spends her time antagonising Shark, and Shark himself comes off just like House. He’s tetchy and unlikable. Until you get to understand him that is. That said, much like ‘House’, it’s pretty good at what it does. While I imagine “case of the week” episodes will get boring pretty quickly much like that show did, Woods’ performance as Shark is fantastic. If this isn’t one of the big hits of this television season, I’ll be very surprised. It’s good, simple entertaining television.

That’s all for now, although I imagine a fresh batch of shows will be coming up in a few days. Until then, more of those music orientated posts will be appearing once again from this evening. Oh, and seeing as music is the focus here, here’s a rather apt song:

MP3 Desaparecidos - What’s New For Fall (expired)

There is something about M. Ward’s music that tends to make me like and dislike it at the same time. Through most of his albums, I find his songs pleasant enough, and while his vocals and guitar work are also top notch, the songs always seem a little too archaic sounding for their own good. Now this isn’t always the case, and there’s always a few songs on each album that manage to shine through. That’s usually the upbeat, jaunty songs from each release in my case, so it’s lucky that the first song I got to hear from his upcoming album, ‘Post-War’, falls into that category.

‘To Go Home’ isn’t particularly groundbreaking if you’re already familiar with previous album ‘Transistor Radio’. Seeing as that was the strongest Ward album though, that isn’t a bad thing. Bringing in the same kind of extra sounds that made that album enjoyable (yay for tinkling pianos) and adding a backing vocal, something that adds to the texture of the song no end. It’s not just any backing vocal either, it’s Neko Case in the background here, whose voice plays off perfectly against Ward’s gruff sound. I’m still not hugely excited by this album, but if I hear a few more songs of this kind of quality, I can myself growing to like it.

MP3 M. Ward - To Go Home

‘To Go Home’ is taken from M. Ward’s upcoming album ‘Post-War’, which will be released on August 22 on Merge Records.

M. Ward: Website || Myspace

It’s not very often that I get genuinely excited about an unsigned British band. In fact, since I started this blog back in february, only Sky Larkin have managed to evoke that kind of interest from me. Today though, I’m going to introduce you to another in the form of Brighton’s 4 or 5 Magicians.

4 or 5 Magicians are a four piece, led by Dan Ormsby, who did pretty much everything on their recorded songs, and takes charge of vocals and guitar duty when the band play live. The most obvious thing in Ormsby is that he has based his style on an influence not often seen in British bands: Stephen Malkmus. Not that Ormsby makes any apologies for this, an entry on the bands Myspace blog detailing the records that shaped their sound proclaims:

“Not only have I basically based my whole onstage performance around him, his style of piecing songs together has also been entirely theived. Without hearing the way Malkmus twists simple chord based songs into jerky pop masterpieces, my songs would probably sound like a bad Oasis. As it is they sound like a bad Pavement, which I am infinitely happier with.”

I couldn’t agree more with any of this. I’ll take a bad Pavement over a bad Oasis any day. Hell, I’d take a bad Pavement over a good Oasis for that matter. The important part here though is that 4 or 5 Magicians don’t sound like a bad Pavement. Sure, there are a lot of similarities in their sound, from Ormsby’s swaggering vocals to the jumps in structure during each song, even to the sound of the guitars on ‘Forever On The Edge’. Bad isn’t a word I would associate though. Even when you take these elements away, the songs themselves are far better than they have any right to be.

‘Forever On The Edge’ has “slacker anthem” written all over it. A brash, honest song about wasting one’s life and almost depending on becoming famous to be successful (”I’m wasting my time in this band / Pinning all my hopes on getting signed / Well it could happen / Some idiot might sign us”). It’s this kind of witty, self-aware writing that first drew me to the band, and that they have the sound to back it up is even better.

Now I should probably point out that quality on these recordings isn’t entirely perfect, mostly because the vocal is a little quiet in comparison to the instrumentation. Both of these songs are still incredibly good though, and with a little tweaking of the aforementioned vocal volume, would be among the best that I have heard this year from any band. The talent is certainly here for that.

You’ll be able to catch 4 or 5 Magicians at a couple of upcoming shows in London (details below), which you should certainly get yourselves down to. That way, when they become popular, you can be one of the cool kids who was there first.

MP3 4 or 5 Magicians - Forever On The Edge (expired)
MP3 4 or 5 Magicians - Tour De Force (expired)

Upcoming gigs:
Thursday 10 August - Nambucca, London (w/ Wojtek Godzisz)
Saturday 16 September - 93 Feet East, London (w/ a ton of other bands, Smalltown American all dayer)

4 or 5 Magicians: Myspace

When I first started Another Form of Relief, I really didn’t anticipate a lot of the music that I’ve ended up writing about on here. Since I’ve started this I’ve included a lot more electronic music than I intended, have flirted on the outskirts of rap (albeit of the nerd variety) and now I’m going to write about some Brazilian disco. Of course, none of this is in any way supposed to be a negative thing. My point here is that this blog has opened me up to a lot of music I never usually would have listened to, and that can only be a good thing.

Regarding the aforementioned Brazilian disco, we have Cansei De Ser Sexy (’Tired of Being Sexy’ if you’re curious), a sextet from Sao Paulo who are making some rather great music. Now, I’ll be honest and admit that this idea didn’t seem all that appealing. I also came rather late to them, only discovering them when their video for ‘Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above’ was featured last week on Youtube. I didn’t think that much of it at the time, but it got stuck in my head enough for me to find more of their songs, and I’m hooked.

Now the music here isn’t particularly challenging, all drums, synth and the kind of bored vocals you’d imagine coming out of Karen O. if only she would calm down a little. It’s rough, noisy and to the point. Which all adds up to a hell of a lot of fun.

MP3 Cansei De Ser Sexy - Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above
MP3 Cansei De Ser Sexy - This Month, Day 10 (expired)
MP3 Cansei De Ser Sexy - Art Bitch (expired)

Cansei De Ser Sexy’s latest, self-titled album, was released in the US (and I guess other places) last week.

Cansei De Ser Sexy: Myspace

I’m glad that after all of these years of using the internet, someone has finally had the guts to describe exactly what the internet is and how it works. And apparently it’s a series of tubes! Who would have thought? This pearl of wisdom comes from internet expert Ted Stevens, an 82 year old Senator (and third in the line of succession for the US Presidency) from Alaska. Don’t think he sounds qualified? Well he’s chairman of the Senate commerce committee, which means he’s in control of regulating the internet. So he must know what he’s talking about. Right?

This helpful tidbit came from a debate on the issue of net neutrality. I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that this is an issue that I have really kept up with, largely because I think it’s being made out to be a bigger deal than it really is. Apparently there is a campaign to Save The Internet though, so if you’re in the US and like the internet the way it is, you might want to investigate that a little.

Anyway, Stevens is against this neutrality thing, and put across a brilliant case describing exactly where he stands, while still explaining how the internet works to those that may not understand. Best of all, to put his message across to the kids, Paul Holcomb from The Bold Headed Broadcast has combined his message with techno music. Because we all know that’s what the kids are listening to.

MP3 Paul Holcomb - A Series Of Tubes (DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix) (expired)

For more information about net neutrality from Senator Stevens, be sure to check out his new “blogger” where he will “type websites to explain why Network Neutrality is a bad thing for our already clogged internet pipes”. Fantastic.