Another Form of Relief

Now that London Popfest is out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to this year’s Indietracks festival, which will take place 23-25 July at the lovely Midland Railway Centre in Derbyshire.  Last year we covered the event quite extensively, and this year will be no different.  Previews of the bands in the run up to the event, followed by reports and a shit ton of photos of the weekend itself.  I’m not exaggerating when I call Indietracks the highlight of my musical year.  Where else can you get a non-stop indiepop while surrounded by (and sometimes on!) steam trains?

Rather excitingly, the first band announcements are now out, giving us our first 24 bands that will be playing the festival:

• Allo Darlin’
• Ballboy
• Be Like Pablo
• Betty and The Werewolves
• Boy Genius
• The Cannanes
• Cineplexx
• Fanfarlo
• The Felt Tips
• Foxes!
• The Give It Ups
• The Just Joans
• The Loves
• MJ Hibbett & the Validators
• Onward Chariots
• Sarandon
• Shrag
• The Smittens
• Standard Fare
• Stars of Aviation
• The Sunny Street
• This Many Boyfriends
• White Town
• Winston Echo

Highlights for myself amongst that lot include Allo Darlin’, Ballboy and Standard Fare, but there’s a lot there already that I’m looking forward to.  A number that I’m not familiar with that I look forward to getting acquainted with too.  No word on any headliners just yet, but announcements seem to be coming thick and fast now, so hopefully we’ll have more soon.

Update: Of course, mere hours after I post this, 8 new additions have revealed: Internet Forever, Pale Sunday, Burning Hearts, The Hillfields, La La Love You, Stars in Coma, Springfactory, Urbantramper.

Indietracks Website / Blog / Twitter

This past weekend was my first experience of London Popfest, an annual event that aims to bridge the gap between Indietracks’ for indiepop kids. Taking place over four days in deepest London, the world’s finest indiepop bands descend on tiny venues to “indiepop ’til we drop“. For various reasons I only made it to the Friday and Saturday days of the weekend, but the weekend still managed to be the highlight of the year so far.

Friday // Buffalo Bar

What a tiny, tiny venue. Little more than a square room with a stage on one wall and a bar on another, it’s amazing just how packed the place quickly became. I’ve been into some cramped venues before, but the torturous “trek to the toilet” that I endured here may have been the worst. Still, any negative feeling there was quickly countered by the music itself. The Sunny Street provided some decent melancholy pop to start. I wish I could say more about it but the sound was a bit crappy where I standing. Moving to a new spot for Horowitz massively turned me around on them. I’d been familiar with them for years but they’ve never done much for me. Their set was tight and punchy though, and I’ll definitely be exploring their album(s?) some more. Up next, The Garlands brought some Swedish flavour to the festival, including somehow even getting away with a Wham! cover. Headliners The Just Joans opened with their excellent Hey Boy…You’re Oh So Sensitive!, which was useful as it’s the only song theirs I really like and allowed me to duck out a bit before the end before the heat and volume in the Buffalo Bar finally destroyed my head completely.

Saturday // 100 Club

I hate going to the 100 Club. Not because I have anything against the venue itself. Indeed, it’s actually a nicely laid out venue, everything being sideways with a stage in the middle meaning everyone gets a decent view. My problem with the 100 Club is it’s location. Being right in the centre of Oxford Street, there is literally nowhere to park anywhere near it (short of paying something ludicrous per hour in an underground horror movie set), particularly for an all-dayer. It’s fine for Londoners and their public transport and all, trying to get back to Kent at god knows when from central London without a car is an absolute bastard. That aside though, I did enjoy the fact that from Oxford Street itself, the most recognisable shopping street in the country for locals and tourists alike, you could hear indiepop blasting out of the doors for much of Saturday. Probably didn’t win any new fans, but the thought of random Japanese tourists being assaulted by the sounds of Allo, Darlin’ as they walked past amused me no end.

Walked into the place during Plouf!, had a quick drink and walked back out again in search of Forbidden Planet round the corner instead. Nothing against Plouf! in particular, but they just aren’t really my cup of tea. Arrived back somewhere toward the end of Red Shoe Diaries who seemed pretty good and made me regret disappearing for so long. Oh well.

After that began the perfect triple bill of Soda Fountain Rag, Standard Fare and Allo, Darlin’. Soda Fountain Rag was perhaps the most surprising of the three. I loved (and posted about) her brilliant Don’t Kill The Clowns back in 2008, but when I listened to some more songs, they didn’t seem to match up. Live though, it’s a different matter altogether, the end result being one of the most consistent sets of the weekend. Standard Fare seem to be on a meteoric indiepop rise at the moment. Seemingly coming out of nowhere over the past year, they managed to absolutely own their set, and seeing them headline such an event by next is by no means out of the question. Allo, Darlin’ are one of my favourite bands from the past year, and seeing them live was joyful. I’m convinced that they can’t make a song that isn’t catchy as hell, and rousing renditions of the superb Henry Rollins Don’t Dance and The Polaroid Song did nothing to argue with that view. Newer songs like Dreaming and Kiss Your Lips fit just as well, the latter even managing to sample Weezer’s El Scorcho, something that will instantly endear it to popkids the world over.

Not much was going to compete with that combination so it was time for a nice walk up and down Oxford Street after that, leading to an indulging in Burger King and trying to work out where the hell the light shining on Centre Point was coming from. Never did figure that one out. Wandered back into the 100 Club to see most of Shrag’s set, which was a pleasant surprise. I’ve never been much of a fan of their recorded output, but their live set was pretty damn fun. Following them were the wonderful Ballboy, taking their rightful place as headliners. Opening with the mighty Avant Garde Music, they ran through
a mixture of old classics and newer material. Sadly I missed the last bit of their set due to requiring a tube back to the car parked across the city. From the half I did see though, they were certainly one of the most professional bands of the festival. And I’m not just saying that because Gordon McIntyre told me to.

Please find below a lovely gallery of photos that are in black and white to look arty, and certainly not because I suck at taking decent pictures in low light.

When I was first approached by BBC Music to put together a list of albums I think should be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, I was initially hesitant. First of all because I don’t much care for awards, and if I’m honest, have never paid attention to the Mercury Prize. Secondly, because I hardly ever listen to complete albums these days. I want to be an elitist snob and pretend that I do, but most of my music is absorbed via an iPod on shuffle.

Throwing around the year’s music in my head though, I realised that it’s actually been a bloody good year for British music. I initially came up with a couple of albums, then a couple more, and it kept going from there. In the interests of brevity, I’ve limited the final tally to seven exceptional albums and a handful of honourable mentions at the end. I don’t expect a single one of these to actually be nominated for the prize, but hey, I’m happy to be proved wrong.

God Help The Girl – God Help The Girl

Okay, so it’s not a radical departure for the Belle & Sebastian mould for Stuart Murdoch’s solo/side/whatever project, but that’s no bad thing. It’s not often these days that albums tend to tell a complete story, and that is what we have here. Ably held together by Catherine Ireton and an array of guests, it’s not absolutely perfect – the Funny Little Frog cover is especially misguided – but it unashamedly embraces the album format when everyone else seems to be fleeing from it.

MP3 God Help The Girl – Come Monday Night

Dananananaykroyd – Hey Everyone!

I’m under no illusions that the prize would ever get near an album like this, but that doesn’t make it any less deserving. To find a band with this much energy on stage is rare enough in itself, but to get the same urgency on record is near impossible. Dananananaykroyd manage it, giving us one of the finest debut albums in years. It’s loud, it’s messy, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

MP3 Dananananaykroyd – Pink Sabbath

Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura give us three out of three so far for the Scots. It felt like Camera Obscura had reached their peak with their previous album Let’s Get Out Of This Country. Then My Maudlin Career pops up and blows it out of the water with it’s beautifully textured songs. It’s taken more than a decade, but this is the album Camera Obscura were destined to make.

MP3 Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

Emmy the Great – First Love

Out of all of the albums on this list, I’d imagine First Love is the one most likely to turn up on any Mercury lists if any of them do. I can’t quite pinpoint why, but Emmy does seem to fit the slightly left of the centre singer-songwriter style that seems to have made the lists in previous years. The album is a grower for sure, but there is some stunning songwriting on display here. Emmy has only barely scratched the surface of what she is capable of.

MP3 Emmy the Great – We Almost Had A Baby

Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Los Campesinos! remain the most posted band on this blog, and rightly so. Coming out with a good first album and then following it up with one of the best albums of the year within six months is no mean feat. Evolving beyond the “tweexcore” fun of the first, this is an album that actually has emotional depth and philosophy added to the proceedings. All while still continuing to sound like quite nothing else that’s around at the moment.

MP3 Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Thomas Tantrum – Thomas Tantrum

Thomas Tantrum pick up right where the dearly missed Life Without Buildings left off. Rough, random songs jump all over the place, but the appeal here is in the voice of Megan Thomas. Breezily floating between gentle and slightly unhinged, she gives the songs an unpredictable air. That their debut album is so strong is all the more impressive given they were a pretty mediocre live band only a year earlier.

Video Thomas Tantrum – Work It

Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs – How To Get To Heaven From Scotland

Seems only fitting that we end with yet another Scottish album, resulting in them making up more than half of the list. It’s taken Aidan Moffat a little while to find the project that suits him after Arab Strap split, but The Best Ofs seems to be it. Allowing his songwriting and voice to be front and centre plays right into his strengths and results in an album more consistent than anything he and Middleton put out.

MP3 Aidan Moffat & The Best Ofs – Big Blonde

Honourable mentions
Fanfarlo – Reservoir
It Hugs Back – Inside Your Guitar
Ballboy – I Worked On The Ships
Sky Larkin – The Golden Spike

The girl who works in the record shop
She says that I’m not avant garde enough
Well so what?
She only works in the record shop
And I don’t give a fuck what she says or she thinks about me

Well it’s good to know that he didn’t let it get to him too much. Could have been embarrassing had he, say, written an entire song around such an incident and then used it to open an album. It’s this kind of irony that Ballboy seems to be based around though. Entire songs form sardonic, self-depreciating rants. Or they could be quite sweet tales of love. Or they could be bitter tirades about the state of the music industry. Truth is, you never know what you’re going to get from one Ballboy song to the next.

It’s partly this that makes them one of the most underrated bands in the country. Place them next to fellow Scots Belle & Sebastian and they could give them a run for their money. Various instrumentation sets the tone. Sometimes you’ll get straight up singing, sometimes you’ll get spoken word. You may be listening to something that’s quietly contemplative, or you may be listening to something that flat out rocks. Certainly none of it is avant garde, but all of it is good.

Ballboy are one of those bands that has existed for years yet only a few dedicated fans seem to know about them. Which is kind of a shame as once they finally come to their end of their road they will probably be seen as one of the great British indie bands of this decade. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The band are from Scotland and make songs that are sometimes upbeat and usually miserable. Thankfully, they don’t sound like Arab Strap, who seem to be the blueprint for all indie bands coming out of Scotland these days. Not that they don’t come close at times. I Hate Scotland is a spoken word diatribe against anything and everything the likes of which wouldn’t seem out of place on an album by that band. But the sound here is so varied that they are far harder to pigeonhole. I Lost You But I Found Country Music is a gentle, mournful song about exactly what it says while Avant Garde Music is the exact opposite gentle and just may be the most sardonic song I’ve ever heard.

Ballboy haven’t released anything since 2004 and their website seems pretty quiet on exactly what they are up to at the moment. They seem to still play the odd shows though, so there must be a little gas left in the tank at least.

MP3 Ballboy – I Hate Scotland (expired)
MP3 Ballboy – Avant Garde Music (expired)
MP3 Ballboy – Donald in the Bushes With a Bag of Glue (expired)
MP3 Ballboy – The Art of Kissing (expired)
MP3 Ballboy – I Lost You But I Found Country Music (expired)

Ballboy: Website || Myspace

What is it about Scottish bands that they all have to do at least one (usually multiple) spoken word songs? I enjoy a good spoken word song, but most tend to be pretty awful or gimmicky. It only seems to be the Scottish bands that can actually get away with such a thing and I don’t have the slightest idea why. Is it something about the accent that makes it appealing? All of the ones included in this post feature thick accents, but there has to be more to it than that. Most bands don’t even tend to try this kind of song, yet Scottish bands all seem to give it a go.

Anyway, this all came about after I discovered Ballboy, and by discover, I mean read about them on another music blog. All of their songs were interesting and I’m happy to have found another band that I like, but it was ‘I Hate Scotland’ that appealed to me the most. It’s not actually a song about hating Scotland, more a moan about settling in our lives. It’s not a particularly complex song, just Gordon McIntyre’s “guy in the pub” words over a fairly repetitive backing track. Yet somehow, it still manages to be fantastic.

MP3 Ballboy – I Hate Scotland (expired)

Please find some more examples of this type of song below. Arab Strap painfully discovering a partner’s infidelity, Belle and Sebastian travelling to Mars and My Latest Novel being kind of non-sensical, but in a fun kind of way.

MP3 Arab Strap – Love Detective (expired)
MP3 Belle & Sebastian – A Space Boy Dream (expired)
MP3 My Latest Novel – The Job Mr. Kurtz Done (expired)

Anyone have more examples of this kind of song?