Another Form of Relief

Great British Hopes are the main reason we do this in the first place.

It never ceases to amaze me how a band can suddenly just pop up out of nowhere.  Standard Fare have apparently been about since 2006.  The first I heard of them was a few months ago when their Christmas song Tinsel Politics started doing the rounds.  It seems that I wasn’t alone in that either.  The first music blog mention of them I can find is from July 2009.  Seeing as music blogs are the only gauge of how noticed a band are, I can only assume that they were playing gigs to three people for the three years in between.

This year though, Standard Fare seem to be blowing up.  Everywhere I look, there they are.  London Popfest?  Check.  SXSW?  Check.  Indietracks?  Do you even need to ask?  Their suddenly ride in these particular circles actually reminds me of the great Los Campesinos! explosion of 2006.  Hell, both bands even have recognisable songs with “dancing” in the title.  Can’t argue with reasoning like that.

Of course, none of this would be happening in the first place if the talent wasn’t there to back it up.  Standard Fare provide a nice throwback to the days when jangly guitars and half-bored female vocalists were all the rage.  Clever indie pop for those who likes things just a little on the harder side of twee.

Website / Myspace / Twitter

Japandroids are a little louder than the kind of stuff I tend to skew towards these days.  Occasionally though it’s just nice to have something that rocks the fuck out.  Which is something these guys seem to have no problem doing.  It’s hard, it’s fast, doesn’t make a great deal of sense and also manages to evoke the spirit of Death From Above 1979.  Which isn’t a bad set of traits to have at all.  Myspace.

MP3 Japandroids – Art Czars

Now this is just lovely.  North Carolina band Israel Darling are the first band in a while to make me sit up and listen purely on the opening lines to their song.  After that it seems to go from one excellent lyric to another.  The band thankfully have the good sense to let the words be the centre here.  Never drowned out and surrounded by excess instrumentation, everything has room to breathe.  Myspace.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Lawrence Arabia on the basis on this song.  I like about half the song and find the rest of it to be quite grating.  The verses work for me, but the high pitched repetition of the words “apple pie” over and over kind of puts me off of it.  The fact I do keep coming back to it despite this suggest there is definitely things here that I like, so maybe I’d get on with other songs more.  Video.  Myspace.

MP3 Lawrence Arabia – Apple Pie Bed

The Pavement reunion tour is now well and truly on it’s way around the world.  The band is just now wrapping up it’s dates in Australasia, and will next be onto Japan before heading on to Europe and the US.  Reports from these early dates seem good, with some pretty spectacular setlists being played each night.

To coincide with this, the lovely people at Filthy Little Angels have put together a Pavement cover album entitled (what else?) Show Me A Word That Rhymes With Pavement.  Collecting 17 artists, including Horowitz, Cats and Cats and Cats, Benjamin Shaw, Billy Ruffian and a whole bunch of other hip and happening types.  The compilation covers both obvious and more obscures ends of the Pavement back catalogue.  As is inevitable with things like this, some work better than others, but it certainly hits a lot more than it misses.

MP3 Cats and Cats and Cats – Cut Your Hair

MP3 The International Karate Plus – Box Elder

The entire 17 track Show Me A Word That Rhymes With Pavement album is available now as a free download from Filthy Little Angels.

I was sent some songs by Screaming Maldini sometime last year and if I’m honest, I didn’t like them very much.  When they were announced as the latest signings of the mighty Alcopop!, it seemed prudent to give them another try.  Now either they have changed for the better or they just went over my head first time round, as they seem to be pretty damn good now.  This is pop music that rejects the basic concepts of pop.  It’s awkward, jumpy music, but after a couple of plays, it’s also a ton of fun.  Their debut EP, which is really quite lovely, is out now.  Myspace.

MP3 Screaming Maldini – The Extraordinary

Boca Chica are from Pittsburgh and make the kind of lush, half-rock, half-folk kind of music that seemed to be everywhere a few years back.  They do it incredibly well though, knowing that restraint is often key to these things.  The vocals are allowed room to become the centrepiece of the song, with the rest of the instrumentation popping in at just the right moments.  Perfectly gentle for those long hot days.  Myspace.

Now this is just weird.  A while back I wrote about a singer-songwriter from Austin called Elaine Greer.  She made these lovely little acoustic folk songs.  Now here she is in a rock band that’s halfway between the 80s and We Are Scientists (who incidentally they have played with).  It’s decent stuff.  I prefer the solo songs myself, but the juxtaposition is certainly interesting.  Myspace.

It was two and a half years ago that I first discovered Roadside Poppies, when they were release 001 on the Weepop! label. I really liked that release, particularly the title track from it, Cycling and Crying. Since that time though, I haven’t heard a great deal about the band at all. If I’m honest, I’d actually forgotten all about them.

This past weekend though I stumbled across their Bandcamp page, which had a new three song EP, Live at Chateau Blanc, available on it for free download. That said, this isn’t a full-band release though, as helpfully explained on the page itself:

How do you do a live EP in France with half the band in Denmark and the keyboard player in Cambridge? Easy- play all the instruments yourself and make it sound as Danish as possible

The funny thing is that it doesn’t seem to make much difference to the sound, so read what you will into the creation of indiepop from that. It hardly matters though, as I’ve Just Been Told That a Woman Fancies Me may be my favourite indiepop of the year so far. It’s literally what it sounds like, a joyous celebration of the fact that a woman seems to like him, despite the fact he knows absolutely nothing about her. Why let pesky details like that get in the way? That we end up with lines like “I can’t wait to tell my girlfriend” makes it all the more perfect.

All three songs from Live at Chateau Blanc can be downloaded for free from Bandcamp.

So much music, so little time. Which you means you get three songs at once. Lucky you.

Cop on the Edge are a band I could very easily hate depending on my mood when I discovered them. Their music is loud, rough, and if I’m honest, occasionally annoying. Summer Games II though is a pretty catchy little song. I’m not sure if I could stick a whole album of this, but as a short, sharp shock to a system that has spent a weekend listening to bands in cardigans, it kind of works.

Bad Veins don’t do anything spectacularly original on Gold and Warm. It’s almost straight up indie rock, with solid melodies, just the right amount of distortion and the odd musical flourish when it can get away with it. It’s all done incredibly well though that it doesn’t really matter if there’s not much new here. Bad Veins are a band precisely of the time and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them become rather popular.

I’ve been aware of Thao Nguyen for quite a while now, but it’s only really now that everything is clicking for me. With her awkwardly named three-piece band, Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, she now seems to be finding her sound in slightly off-kilter folk rock songs. The band’s new album has just been released, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing it all.

MP3 Airport Girl – The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness
With London Popfest coming up in just a few days, it seemed prudent to familiarise myself with some of the bands on the bill that I didn’t recognise. One of these was Rob Price, who is also the front man of Airport Girl, one of those bands that has been around for years yet I’ve never noticed. Thankfully that has been rectified now though, with the wonderfully awkwardly titled The Foolishness That We Create Through Love Is The Closest We Come To Greatness. It’s not just the title that’s long either. It’s a rare indiepop song that manages to run over six minutes and never outstay it’s welcome.
Myspace / Fortuna Pop!

MP3 Operator Please – Logic
I really enjoyed Operator Please’s single Get What You Want a few years ago. It was a fun, punchy little number that got straight to the pop. Logic doesn’t seem to work quite as well. There’s nothing really wrong with it, it’s just a little too plodding for my tastes. A lot of other people seem to be liking it though, so maybe it’s just me.
Myspace

MP3 Pale Sunday – Shooting Star
If I was asked to tell you what country Pale Sunday came from, I’d probably get it wrong. I’d likely lean toward the US, the UK, or for an outside bet, somewhere like Sweden. Somewhere like Brazil wouldn’t even cross my mind. I’ve never really considered South America as somewhere indiepop would come out of, but Pale Sunday are seemingly doing their best to change that. Jangly guitars and harmonies are the order of the day here. If you’re familiar with other bands from the Matinée stable (Northern Portrait, Cats on Fire etc.), you know exactly what you’re getting here.
Myspace / Matinée Recordings

I’ve been listening to Flamboyant Bella for a few days now and really can’t make up my mind on it. The fact that the first impression I got was “this is what Kate Nash fronting a full band would sound like” didn’t really help matters. I like Nash and all, but her songwriting certainly appeals over her voice. Anyway, Flamboyant Bella have a nice, airy sound to their music that does ultimately work, so I think I’m coming down on the side of like. It’s actually kind of perfect as summer music. Shame that it’s January.

Us Kids is out now directly from the band’s website.

It was only a few months after I discovered And What Will Be Left Of Them?, a very noisy yet very good band from Worcester, that they decided to break up. I didn’t really expect to hear much more from them after that. Suddenly this gem dropped into the inbox though, and in the course of a couple of minutes manages to run rings round the mighty AWWBLOT.

Lost Boy Scout is the one-man band of Peter Adams, who was the “chief shouter, song writer and guitar hitter” in the previous band. He apparently intends to release four albums this year (the result of a drunken bet naturally) and if this is anything to go by, it’s going to be a hell of a journey.

The first of the four albums, Stag, is out now on PopArt London.

I largely missed the Sambassadeur bandwagon up until now. I was vaguely aware of them and discovered a few songs in my music library, so I must have stumbled across them to at least some degree. By and large they went right over my head though, which is slightly odd as they seem to be my kind of band.

Days is the lead single from the band’s upcoming third album, entitled European. It’s a wonderfully orchestral journey that evokes the same kind of Swedish indie pop joy that one gets from bands like Irene, or even more local contemporaries like Camera Obscura. It has a big sound to it, which can easily be too much for this kind of music, but it’s self-assured enough to know how to make it work.

It’s about time I head back through those previous Sambassadeur albums I think.

European will be released on February 24 via Labrador Records.