Another Form of Relief

Of all of the somewhat popular British bands around at the moment, I find Maximo Park to be the most tolerable. Whilst most of the others tend to cause at least minor ear bleeding, these guys at least seem able to string a creative song together. Their first album, A Certain Trigger, left me slightly cold, but I really enjoy the majority of Our Earthly Pleasures. While there is nothing about them that would ever give me cause to call them a favourite band or the such, most of their songs are pretty damn good. If this is what passes as mainstream these days, things can’t be too bad.

Imagine a world so surreal that the police would run a spelling bee in order to catch the band playing during the intermission to stop their crime spree. This is the world occupied by Fishboy, and it’s a joy to behold. It may all sound a little jarring at first, with it’s bold guitars, horns and sometimes snarling vocals, but given a couple of plays, the spelling bee becomes a far more welcoming locale.

It’s probably a song everybody knows at this point, but I’m on something of a Postal Service kick for the first time in over a year. On the off chance that you have been living under a rock for the past few years, enjoy!

Oh what a difference time can make. It was the best part of three years ago that I first heard Jeremy Warmsley. This song (albeit in demo form) was actually the first one I ever heard. It didn’t really go down very well with me. I didn’t have anything against it, but something about his voice just put me off. So what’s changed now? I don’t know. The song hasn’t really, beyond being slightly more crisply produced. Which puts the change at my feet, even if I can’t explain it. It sounds good to me now though, and that’s the main thing.

I’m having a lethargic few days, so today we have something loud, fast and messy. Of course, who would be more suited for that than The Thermals? No Culture Icons was the lead off single from their 2003 debut album, More Parts Per Million. It’s a brash, repetitive rally against those who would attempt to crush free thought. This being The Thermals though, the last bit goes off on an entirely different tangent, where it somehow turns into a love song.

Every now and again I’ll come across a band that should be huge. Maybe not in the sense of selling out arenas or anything quite that dramatic, but indie huge. Maybe Pavement or Weezer level, or Broken Social Scene or whatever else the kids are listening to these days. Anyway, I digress. Meneguar are one of those bands. Somehow they’ve managed to put out two albums without me never having heard of them until a couple of months back. They are already firmly cemented as my discovery of 2008 though, and I’ve had their second album, Strangers In Our House, on almost constant repeat of late.

There is nothing flashy about these songs. This isn’t a band that dabbles in extra instrumentation as a gimmick. What you’ve got here is the standard rock band setup, nothing more, nothing less. Yet there is an urgency here not often heard. The vocals vary from the restrained to the deranged, often within a few seconds. Every song is good enough to be a single; every single good enough to be a classic.

Concluding our run of indie pop (for this week at least), we have new material from London’s Pocketbooks. I’ve been listening to them for the best part of two years now, and it’s amazing how much they have developed as a band. The early songs, while very good in their own right, were far more simplistic and lo-fi to what we’re dealing with now. As such, we’re now at a point where Don’t Stop comes complete with layered vocals, time changes, as well as the obligatory delightful melodies. If they keep growing at this rate, in another couple of years they will be the best indie pop band in the world.

The new EP from Pocketbooks, entitled Waking Up, can be purchased from Make and Mend Records for only £2.50. Pocketbooks, alongside recently featured bands The Kabeedies and The Smittens, will be playing at the Indietracks festival in July.

I seem to go through phases with music, where I’ll latch on to a particular type at any given time. I assume this is something everyone does to a degree for varying reasons, but it does mean that I’m heavily into the twee at the moment. As such, today with have a another dose of indie pop from Vermont’s The Smittens. Male-female call and response vocals are the order of the day here, switching between the overly sweet and the overly jaded. All of which is carried out with a gentle cynicism which doesn’t do anything to the cheery mood.

The Kabeedies are a four-piece from Norwich who makes something that sounds like “pop music, but shit” according to their Myspace page. Obviously a comment meant in jest, but it’s about as far away from the truth as you can be. Featuring indie pop staples of handclaps, complaining that everything is “dead boring” and random calls to dance. It’s a shambolic two minutes, but a well constructed shambles. If this is what the shit pop music sounds like, who needs the good stuff?

You can download more songs from The Kabeedies’ self-released album/EP/something entitled Woman? via their Myspace page.

It seems that the only times I bother to write about Pony Up is when I’ve got them doing a cover of something. Not one to easily break with tradition, I now have them covering everyone’s favourite Australian named Ben, Ben Lee. We’re All In This Together originally appeared on his 2005 album Awake Is The New Sleep, and album full of beautiful mediocrity, something this song nailed perfectly. The Pony Up edition (incidentally recorded as a b-side for one of Lee’s singles) slows it down, adds a more sombre tone and throws in some vocal harmonies for fun. None of which makes it better, or worse, than the original. Just different.