Another Form of Relief

Yesterday marked the start of Another Form of Relief’s second year. This crept up on me so quickly that I didn’t give the whole thing a great deal of thought until the day had already passed. Sometimes it feels like only a few weeks ago that I started all this, other times like I have been doing it for years. If you’ll allow me to ramble, I’m going to write for a little bit about this blog and how it has affected me over the past twelve months.

The idea to start this blog first came toward the end of January of last year. I’d gone through a not particularly fun break-up earlier in the month, and the structure of my job changed significantly, both of which left me with a fair bit of extra free time on my hands. It was also in the weeks leading up to this time that I’d first discovered music blogs, and I started tossing around the idea in my head. The first time I actually voiced my intent was in an email to a friend on January 23, when I wrote

I’m thinking about starting up at mp3 blog. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the appearence of these, but they seem to be popping up all over the place over the past few months. Not sure what I can add by doing one myself, but it’s something I’d like to try. Not really sure what’s involved logistically just yet (mostly the storage and legal issues), but there seem to be a large number and they aren’t going to jail, so I’m going to look into the idea.

It turns out that most if it was surprisingly simple to setup, and on February 26, Another Form of Relief launched with a rather low-key post on The Young Republic. Over the next few weeks, I tweaked the design a little, and made various changes in how I formatted the posts. “Buy it now” links quickly disappeared, the original design didn’t make it past the first six months and I found myself writing in increasing detail about the bands I featured. I’ve also been through the “to have ads or not have ads” debate more times than I care to remember, each time seeing them disappear and then reappear on the site.

I think I hit my stride a few months in, and by the summer I was updating pretty much daily. By this time I seemed to have attracted the attention of various promo companies and bands. I’d start getting songs regularly sent to me by email, both from promo companies and bands. The songs sent by bands themselves were invariably better than the promo company ones. Suddenly I was being offered free CDs, which led to me opening a PO Box out of paranoia of giving out my address to all these potentially scary bands. They arrived rarely at the start, but one year on, I have a mountain of CDs on my desk that I haven’t even listened to yet. Offers of guest list places for gigs began to arrive, although these were usually turned down on the grounds that London is kind of a bitch to drive to unless I’m already in love with your band.

I don’t know when I realised that blogging was hindering my ability to listen to music, but it’s become increasingly noticable in the last few months. The constant chase of the “next big thing” or even just a good new band to write about means I end up neglecting those that I already like. I can’t even tell you the last time that I listened to an album in it’s entirity, nor can I remember when I last spent more than 30 seconds judging a new song. Both of those things are certainly not a good thing for either music or me as a listener, but that’s the reality. I don’t have time to give everything new several listens when there is always a pile of stuff I haven’t heard even once yet. The result of this is that my music taste has ended up skewing toward the upbeat and catchy, or anything that has a hook to quickly grab me. The idea of the a song that grows on me is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.

That doesn’t mean I’m unhappy about what I do here though. I’ve never taken to a “project” as much as I have this one, even if some bad comes with it. On the most part, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve found and written about music that I never would have considered listening to in the past. I’ve met a bunch of great people, from other bloggers to musicians to just readers, and for that I am grateful. Then there are the “perks”. I won’t deny that I’ve made a little money through the ads I’ve run on this site, but that probably hasn’t been enough to cover even the hosting bills completely. The “swag” is also fun - there’s nothing quite like getting a handcrafted demo CD in my box. The thing that leaves me most smug is probably when I see my blog pop up in other places though. I was overjoyed when another blog first linked to me. It was a lot of fun when bands started including things I’d written on their websites. Every now and then the blog or something I’d posted would turn up in more mainstream places, like the Best Week Ever blog, The Toronto Star, or my personal favourite, The Guardian.

As I move into the second year of this blog, I’d like to think that I’ve hit my stride somewhat. There are some things I would like to improve though. I’m trying to write more regularly again, but a number of other factors keep getting in my way. This is why I’ve started writing posts in a format that let me include a bunch of things at once. It’s the only way I can even come close to keeping up with everything I want to tell you about. I want to try and do some more “interviews”, as the ones I did back in the summer were a lot of fun to do. It’s just a matter of choosing some bands and making that initial contact. There will also be more Another Form of Relief promoted shows (next one this thursday! - come down and say hi!) and a number of other fun things.

If you’ve made it through all of this, I commend you. I probably wouldn’t even have even bothered reading all this myself. I really just wanted a small history of this blog and some of my thought processes that go into it. There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t touched upon that I probably should have, but I guess I’ll save that for the two year celebration.

Never one to pass up an oppurtunity to write about Los Campesinos!, those crazy kids have only gone and launched their own website. Not some over the top, impossible to navigate thing like a lot of bands tend to go for though, but a nice simple page that has pretty much all of the information you need right there on the main page. Now, while this is very nice and all, it isn’t really enough for me to warrant writing about in itself, so they have upped the stakes by offering both sides of their double a-side single that’s out today for free download!

Fears that signing to a major label like Wichita might stop the giving from team Campesinos have thankfully proved unfounded, meaning you too can now experience the joy of the new songs. I know I wrote a few weeks back that I was rather cold on these new recordings, but they have really grown on me since then. I think the problem is that the sound is pretty different to the original recordings, so it took some getting used to. Now I’ve heard the songs over and over though, I adore them as much as those early songs.

MP3 Los Campesinos! - Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(s) (expired)
MP3 Los Campesinos! - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives (expired)

In further Los Campesinos! news, London based fans may be unhappy that next weeks show at the Spitz (with the wonderful Sky Larkin and Nosferatu D2 supporting) has sold out, but worry not, for they will be returning to the capital in June. Thanks to Eat Your Own Ears, the band will be playing at the Scala, which will probably be their biggest headline show to date. Full details and ticket information can be found on the Scala website, where you may notice that tickets for the show cost £9.50. If this isn’t a sign of the band’s rise to power, I don’t know what is. To put it into perspective, here is our very own Los Campesinos! Ticketometer!:

I should probably point out that I’m posting this with no malice at all, merely to show just how quickly they seem to have risen from playing tiny shows for next to nothing. If any band deserves to become huge, it’s certainly these guys.

Los Campesinos!: Website || Myspace

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For anyone wanting some gig excitement in the near future, don’t forget that Another Form of Relief, in association with Life:Temper:Riot, will be presenting a lineup of awesome bands, including the fantastic Royal Treatment Plant and Talk Taxis, this coming Thursday in at the Horse & Groom in London. You can find full details, including free mp3s, can be found here.

There are a number and probably quite boring reasons that have resulted in me telling you about this without a great deal of notice. Next week though, Another Form of Relief will be presenting another gig, in association with the good folks of the Life:Temper:Riot club night. Full details of the night are on the poster above, but if for some bizarre reason you can’t see it or something, here are the basics:

What? Another Form of Relief at Life:Temper:Riot.
Who? Royal Treatment Plant, Talk Taxis, Thomas Tantrum, Captain Phoenix.
When? Thursday 1 March (that’s next week!) at 8pm.
Where? The Horse & Groom, which can be located at 26 Curtain Road, Shoreditch. Which is in London.

So you get four excellent bands, in London, and it’ll only cost you a mere £3.99 to enter. You can’t really go wrong with that, can you? If you need further convincing, allow me to tell you about our bands:

Full of driving guitars and some fantastic passive-agressive vocals sung with an urgency that doesn’t often seem to crop up from female fronted British bands, Royal Treatment Plant are one of my surprise favourites from last year. It seems that the mainstream music outlets are catching on to them too with plays on Radio 1, 6Music and XFM in recent months. I didn’t expect to enjoy their CD when it dropped into my post box, but I found myself enjoying as much as some of my favourite albums. Which is a pretty impressive feat when it’s only a three track single. I enjoyed every song on there though, and exploring the songs that were available online turned out to be most fruitful. From the gentle builds to the full on riffs that seem to punctuate every song, Royal Treatment always seem to make for an often surprising, always satisfying listen.

MP3 Royal Treatment Plant - You Don’t Need Me (expired)
MP3 Royal Treatment Plant - Trained (expired)

Royal Treatment Plant: Website || Myspace

Talk Taxis are currently touring the UK in support of The Maccabees to sold out venues, attracting a lot of attention in the process. This is largely thanks to their daring sound, a wonderful combination of opposing influences. You’ll hear elements of funk, punk and dance mixed in with a more familiar indie rock sound, a move that should be destined to failure. Talk Taxis pull it off with such finesse that they sound like old pros, when in reality they only got together two years ago “with a shared enthusiasm for music and badgering inept tutors”. And if you don’t find a band that uses a stylophone “in Rolf Harris inspired moments” appealing, you obviously have no soul.

MP3 Talk Taxis - Publicity (expired)
MP3 Talk Taxis - Mother’s Eyes (expired)

Talk Taxis: Myspace

More female fronted rock goodness comes in the form of Southampton four-piece Thomas Tantrum. While you may not initially hear anything new in their music, as soon as the vocals kick in, you know you’re listening to something unique. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what makes them so appealing, as lead singer Mega Thomas (seriously) has the kind of voice that sounds like it would be out of place in rock and/or roll. The able support of her band though means we’re left with songs that manage to get themselves stuck into your head without you even noticing.

Thomas Tantrum: Website || Myspace

Captain Phoenix are the kind of band that you know are going to be on the cover of NME sooner or later. Their sound seems to arrive already fully formed, expertly crafted songs that are already far better than the majority of things within that very magazine. After playing in excess of 100 gigs around their home town of Winchester, they are now doing much the same around London and the UK as a whole, bringing their sound to the unsuspecting masses.

Captain Phoenix: Website || Myspace

Convinced now? Excellent. We look forward to seeing you there.

I don’t like mashups. I have never encountered one that I like, but I don’t really give them much of a chance in the first place. I’m an originialist when it comes to music. I’m barely okay with samples and it’s only recently that I’ve been able to bring myself to listen to remixes. I’ve never understood the appeal of a mashup though. To take two other artists work and combine them seems a little pointless and a tad wrong. That said, I’m absolutely loving the one that I’ve posted below.

Voxtrot are one of my favourite new bands from the past couple of years, and while I don’t really like Massive Attack, ‘Teardrop’ is a pleasant song. To combine it with Voxtrot’s ‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’ seems like an act of lunacy though. Not one to be put off that by that risk, Voxtrot’s Jared Van Fleet (aka Sparrow House) has done exactly that. As he explains:

Massive Mothers” came about because of a Voxtrot remix contest that the spanish site Buffet Libre was hosting. It had been a year since we had mixed, mastered, and released “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives” and I hadn’t listened to the individual tracks since then. I was curious to see what was there, so I downloaded them, and it was inspiring to hear the song in new ways. Later that night I was listening to “Teardrops” by Massive Attack, and with the remix still on my mind, i couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of a mashup entitled “Massive Mothers”. I stopped laughing long enough to take the two songs apart and start piecing them back together, and this is what i came up with.

All of this means is that we now have the polar opposite of how ‘Mothers’ originally sounded. An upbeat, piano driven song has now been largely stripped down to the basis of ‘Teardrop’ as the backing with Ramesh’s vocal laid over the top of it. The feat here though is how well it all slots together. The vocal times perfectly with the beats in the music, with the words gently guiding the song, but never dominating it. The end result is a song that sounds perfectly crafted. Not bad for something that’s spliced together.

MP3 Voxtrot - Massive Mothers (Voxtrot / Massive Attack mashup) (expired)

The delightful Takka Takka have released their new EP, ‘Talk Faster’, on the internet for everyone to consume for free. It’s only three songs, but those three are among their best work to date, with ‘Draw a Map’ being their most radio friendly song yet. These guys should become something quite big over the next year or so, and they are also getting the same kind of deal The Young Republic has with End of the Road, who are bringing them across to the UK for a few shows before having them play their festival in September. You can get the other songs on the EP, as well as printable artwork, from their website.

MP3 Takka Takka - Draw a Map (expired)

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I’m probably way behind the times here, but I’ve just discovered the joy that is FabChannel. It’s a video archive of over 700 complete gigs, all recorded at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. There’s a lot of stuff in the archives that I’ve never heard of, but if you dig around, there are some great gigs in there. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I’ve already found shows from Bright Eyes, Bloc Party, The Pipettes, Two Gallants, The Applies in Stereo and a ton of other indie favourites.

Best of all, for the blogger types who enjoying featuring a little video every now and then, you can embed entire gigs or your own custom playlists into your blog, which looks far less tacky than the Youtube player. Quality on the gigs ranges from fair to excellent, with the more recent ones obviously looking better than the older one. I’ve included one of the older ones below, a Bright Eyes set from 2002, which I watched in it’s entirity last night. It’s a great setlist, heavily relying on songs from ‘Lifted’, which must have been released around about the same time.

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You’d think if you write for the Guardian you would be expected to have some idea what you’re talking about, but this little “feature” on Los Campesinos! by Paul Lester suggests otherwise. If you don’t like a band, that’s fair enough, but at least get your facts straight when writing about them. This is the kind of “journalism” that I expect from The Sun.

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My Latest Novel were a band I intended to write about way back when I first started writing this blog. I never seemed to get around to them unfortunately, but I’ve recently found them again. Their album, ‘Wolves’, is certainly a grower, and I probably like it more now than I did when I first heard it about a year ago. Their sound is akin to Belle & Sebastian thrown in a blender with The Arcade Fire, which while lazy, is apt. Each of their songs seems to tell a rich story, often changing pace in the middle of a song. ‘The Reputation of Ross Francis’ seems to start off as a gentle acoustic tale, but then turns into a shouty, full band affair for it’s chorus.

MP3 My Latest Novel - The Reputation of Ross Francis (expired)

George Pringle is a vaguely posh sounding girl who talks over repetitive electronic beats. This is the kind of thing that falls right into the “love it or hate it” category. Rationally, I should hate this myself. A few recent digressions aside, I’m not big on the electronic, and the idea of someone just talking on every song doesn’t appeal very much. Somehow though, it works. The songs tend to come across more as poems than musical works, but it doesn’t matter. These are small slices of modern life, whether it be about hangovers, complaining about having a cold (complete with coughing fit in one song) or hating Belle & Sebastian. Now I’d rather be telling you all about ‘I’m Very Scared, Buster’ (listen on Myspace) or ‘I Know Who Mogwai Are, Darling’, both of which are wonderful, but the song below is the only one that’s for download. By no means is it a bad song, it’s certainly a good effort. But it’s not the best.

MP3 George Pringle - Kill Her If You Can, Loverboy (expired)

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You may recall I mentioned the fantastic ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ by Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip a few days, but didn’t include an mp3. While we wait for the single to be released, The Daily Growl has the next best thing: an excellent rendition of the song that they performed live on an XFM session last week. There’s another song there called ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ too, which is also rather good.

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Desmond Reed is a young man from Massachusetts who likes to record songs on a 4-track in his bedroom. There’s probably a million people out there doing this, and most won’t be very good. These aren’t the most technically sound songs you’ll ever hear, but they are enjoyable, if only for the wonderful innocence in Desmond’s words. There aren’t many people that could pull off an entire song dedicated to the history of his pet guinea pigs, but this guy manages it. Throw in some summary harmonies, and these turn into nice little songs from someone with a lot of potential. You can hear more of his songs on his Myspace page.

MP3 Desmond Reed - The Babysitter’s Club (expired)
MP3 Desmond Reed - Guinea Pigs (expired)

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I actually like the new Maximo Park single. What’s happening to me? First the Fratellis, and now this? Good Weather For Airstrikes has an mp3.

—

Always one to keep on flogging a horse, I have another song from The Indelicates. I don’t think the song is particularly new, but it’s just gone up on their website. I realised after listening that it was one of the songs they played at the Command House show that I liked but didn’t know, which makes it a little cooler for me. It’s another upbeat, driven song that sees Simon Indelicate do his angry young man routine, rallying against those who look back nostalgically at times that really weren’t all that great.

MP3 The Indelicates - Fun Is For The Feeble Minded (expired)

Oh look, it’s another indie band from London made up of skinny kids with scruffy hair. It’s around this point that I’d usually start betting just how much they sound like The Libertines or whatever other flavour of the week band is in style this week. Assembly Now know better than to just do what everyone else is doing though. Instead they take the parts that seem to be fundamental to the current music scene and then do the opposite.

Scrappy guitar playing? Distortion all over the melodies. Deliberately fuzzy vocals about nothing. You will find of these things in the music of Assembly Now. The guitars are clean and crisp, every nuance can be clearly heard, and the vocals are both clear and literate. Of course none of these things are new concepts, but they certainly seem to be things that are out of favour at the moment. This makes Assembly Now all the more refreshing.

Both of these songs made up the band’s first single back in August, a limited edition double a-side single, which I’m assuming is sold out now as the band have made both songs available for free. Both of great slices of indie rock, as well as a hint as to the direction the mainstream British scene will be heading in.

MP3 Assembly Now - It’s Magnetic
MP3 Assembly Now - Out on 24s

While we’re at it, here’s an excellent remix of ‘It’s Magnetic’ by Luke Smith, vocalist and guitarist of the now defunct Clor:

MP3 Assembly Now - It’s Magnetic (Luke Smith/Clor Remix)

Assembly Now: Website || Myspace

Lots of random news with some good music thrown in between on this post. It seems that I can’t keep on top of all of the exciting things that are happening with bands I like of late.

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Another Form of Relief favourites The Young Republic have signed a recording contract with End of the Road Records, the label run by the curators of the End of the Road Festival. This is particularly exciting as it’s a UK label, meaning the band will finally achieve distribution on this side of the Atlantic. The label will release a series of 7″ singles (no comment) leading up to a full album made up of previous songs and new material. All of which is very exciting, but it gets even better. End of the Road will kindly be bringing the band to the UK for a run of UK shows sometime over the summer. With all of this, they are destined to blow up in a big way, so be sure to listen to them now so you can claim you were there at the start when they become huge.

MP3 The Young Republic - Blue Skies

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Certified “next big thing” 4 or 5 Magicians have their new demo up for you to listen on their Myspace page. Entitled ‘The 2nd or 3rd EP’, it contains new recordings of ‘Forever On The Edge’ and ‘Your Ficticious Character’ as well as a stunning new song called ‘Behind Each Others Backs’. If a label isn’t willing to put these guys out properly, something is very wrong in the world.

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Now for the most unlikely thing for me to be posting in quite some time, we have Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip. I’m not down with the electronical music or the hipity hop, so I have no idea exactly what genre this kind of thing falls into. However, since some nice person posted a link to it on the Drowned In Sound boards, I have been listening to ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ regularly on their Myspace page. It’s a glorious manifesto for modern life that wants to right as many wrongs as possible in this country, no matter how big or small they may be.

Thou shalt not think that any male over 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a paedophile, some people are just nice

Much as I’d love to share that particular song for you, it’s coming out as a single in the near future, so I probably shouldn’t. However, I do have ‘A Letter From God To Man’, a song that is exactly what it says it is in the title. It’s a wonderfully down to earth essay from god, in a conversational turn, that’s in turns both logical and reasonable. It’s the kind of thing that makes you think that if the religious thought along these lines, the world would be a far more pleasant place.

MP3 Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip - A Letter From God To Man (expired)

Oh, and if anyone knows what the piece of background music is that’s been sampled on this song, I’d love to know. I’m certain that I recognise it, but I have no idea what it is or where it comes from.

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The Svengalis have their debut single up on their Myspace. It’s a double a-side consisting of ‘Sting In The Tale’ and ‘Swimming Upstream’ and will be released via their own Villains and Rogues label on March 10. I’m not entirely sold on the songs yet, with ‘Sting In The Tale’ coming across perhaps a little too much like The Libertines. Don’t get me wrong, both are good little songs, but they aren’t entirely what I expected. ‘Swimming Upstream’ is growing on me quite a bit though.

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I’m not usually one to reprint press releases, but how can I resist things like this:

Inspiration for the album came from a tempestuous relationship with his long-term Danish girlfriend Marie Nielsen. He started writing songs to finally win her back after becoming conscious of being “a total nob”, and dispatched them to Denmark in CD cases packed with dried flowers.

This isn’t actually my first encounter with Findlay Brown’s music. I caught the second half of his set back at the Electric Gardens Festival in August entirely by accident while I was waiting for Absentee. I didn’t think that much of the songs then. They weren’t bad, but nothing that made me want to rush to hear more of his music. It seems that a studio really helps Mr. Brown though, as these songs come off far better than the Ryan Adams-lite I had him tagged as before. These are gentle, thoughtful songs, backed with a lovely sounding acoustic guitar. Which sometimes is all I really want from my music. His album, also called ‘Separated By The Sea’, will be released on Peacefrog Records on February 19.

MP3 Findlay Brown - Separated By The Sea (expired)
MP3 Findlay Brown - Tonight Won’t Wait (expired)

I know I haven’t posted anything for a few days. I started listening to and liking a number of songs by The Fratellis, so I checked myself into rehab. I’m feeling slightly better now though, so we’ve got some catching up to be doing.

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I don’t get to gigs anywhere near as often as I would like, so when I hear about a band I like playing somewhere relatively local I’m there in a second. In this case, it was hearing that The Indelicates would be playing at the Command House in Chatham on January 26, a mere day before my birthday. I had never been to the Command House previously, nor did I know any of the other bands playing. It was (I think) the first gig put on by upstart promoters The People’s Republic of Chatham, so hopefully things like this will become something of a regular event.

We managed to miss the first band, but made it in just as the second were taking to the stage. Not that the Command House has a stage. The downstairs bit used for music is so small the bands just set up in the middle of the floor in front of the audience. Which is pretty cool, even if it makes it a little difficult to see at times. Anyway, these five curious dressed people were setting up, and I had no idea who they are. Usually when I don’t know a band that’s playing, I pay them little attention, but these guys won me over very quickly.

They turned out to be The Space Peacocks, a local band who I had never heard of before, further proving that either the local scene is useless at promoting itself, or I’m entirely ignorant. They started playing with a fantastic energy that remained throughout their set of shambolic, tacky yet wonderful pop songs. The delivery all had an Art Brut kind of vibe about it, with their shouty, talky vocals. This obviously wasn’t lost on the band as they even managed to name check the Art Brut folks in one of their songs.

The sound in the Command House meant keeping track of the lyrics was a little tricky, but I managed to score some mp3s off the band a few days later, some of which you’ll find below. ‘Captain of a Starship’ is a back and forth between James Kirk and one of his female conquests, while ‘Cliché (On My Face)’ takes a well deserved swipe at hipsters who feel the need to wear sunglasses no matter what. Of course, when played live, the band donned sunglasses for an extra slice of irony.

MP3 The Space Peacocks - Cliché (On My Face) (expired)
MP3 The Space Peacocks - Captain of a Starship (expired)
MP3 The Space Peacocks - Assassination City (expired)

The Space Peacocks: Website || Myspace

One quick changeover later and it was time for the main act. The Indelicates took to the stage and immediately launched into ‘The Last Significant Statement Made In Rock & Roll’, a song I was unfamiliar with. It turned out to be a great, driven rock song though, and it will be the lead song from the band’s upcoming German tour EP. After this though, I’m not really sure what songs were played and in what order. I didn’t know a lot of the songs, largely because I only know the ones I’ve been able to grab from the net, and it turns out there are so many more.

This didn’t seem to be of concern to the crowd though. The Command House doesn’t hold many people, but those there were among the most excitable audience I’ve ever been in. The Indelicates are no strangers to the place, having played there at least twice before, and this led to a great atmosphere with audience participation and singing along being the name of the game. Nowhere was this more evident than on a shambolic rendition of ‘New Art For The People’, where Simon Indelicate stepped back from his parts, handing the microphone over to pretty much the entire crowd as the song progressed. Thankfully it didn’t quite get to me, but it was a lot of fun hearing everyone else have their moment to shine, with the song ending with The Space Peacocks back on stage singing along. Of course, the one picture that exists of the crowd (to the right) makes them, including me, look entirely miserable, but we’ll overlook that.

As usual with this sort of thing, the faster, rockier songs went down slightly better than the slower, more ballad like ones, but nearly all of the songs came across well. The band played for the best part of an hour before finally bringing events to a close with a driven performance of standout single ‘We Hate The Kids’, with it’s final refrain of “No more music, thank you and goodnight” proving to be an appropriate way to finish.

MP3 The Indelicates - Julia, We Don’t Live In The 60s (expired)
MP3 The Indelicates - New Art For The People (expired)

The Indelicates: Website || Myspace

All photos by Julia Indelicate or Chris Baldacci.

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So that’s one of the things on my list to write about out of the way. I might just do a huge post tonight or tomorrow that includes a lot of the stuff I want to share or I’m just going to get completely overwhealmed by the backlog.

It doesn’t seem like two years ago that I first heard The Rakes and got their quite good but nothing spectacular album ‘Capture/Release’. It is though, and they have a new album coming up in a couple of months entitled ‘Ten New Messages’. This took me by surprise, and it turns out you can already listen to the first single from it on their Myspace page. It’s not really grabbing me on first listen, but we’ll see how it goes.

It also turns out that the first song on the album is the wonderful ‘The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect’, which has been floating around online for about a year now in two forms. There’s a regular version that runs about five minutes and another that runs eighteen. Much as I like some of the stuff in the extended one, I’m going to assume that the shorter version will be opening the album. It’s a good choice though, even if it’s all rather low key. Hopefully the “pub conversation” section from the original makes it into the album version too. I like conversations set to music. I’m odd like that.

Anyway, today we have a radio session that The Rakes recorded last July for Minnesota Public Radio. It contains three songs, two of them being singles from the first album and the aforementioned ‘World Was A Mess’. Quality is excellent, and it’s fun the way Alan Rake seems to play with the songs midway through them. I’m also guessing that this was broadcast in the daytime thanks to the entirely unsubtle self-censoring of various words. Including “crap”. Go figure.

MP3 The Rakes - 22 Grand Job (live) (expired)
MP3 The Rakes - The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect (live) (expired)
MP3 The Rakes - Work, Work, Work (Pub, Club, Sleep) (live) (expired)

The Rakes: Website || Myspace