Another Form of Relief

Much as I adore the Indelicates, they never sound quite right and I think it’s down to the voices. Their songs aren’t anything out of the ordinary on the most part, although I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to hear a band that is so political so much of the time. To get back to the voices, neither Simon or Julia Indelicate sound like singers in a rock band. Simon sounds like he should be belting out folk protest songs on the edges of musical festivals and Julia is far too developed of a singer to be doing anything other than opera.

All of which gives the band a rather disjointed quality. The elements don’t really form a cohesive whole, and the fact they split lead vocal duties leads to a band that has a lot of sounds but no one of it’s own. This all sounds rather negative and as I’m putting the band down, but I’m not. It works for me personally, but then I tend to enjoy things that sound just a little odd. It may help explain why they haven’t really caught on very much. Outside of Germany at least, where strangely they seem to be quite big.

The two songs here taken from their debut American Demo album demonstrate this perfectly. Our Daughters Will Never Be Free is a vicious attack on the current state on feminism and how things have seemingly gone backwards. I don’t entirely agree with the politics, but it’s so well crafted that it’s hard not to go along with it. And hell, it least it has a political point to make. If Jeff Buckley Is Lived however is another of band’s explorations of rock stars dying early (also on their Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die) and how it changes our perceptions. Would Buckley really have sunk into obscurity following “a weak second album and a difficult third”? Maybe, maybe not. It’s pretty much a given that he wouldn’t be as revered as he is now though.

Both of these songs are good (to my ears anyway), but they certainly don’t sound like they come from the same album. I know we live in an age now where the album is less important than the song, but it makes American Demo lack that special something.

American Demo was released nearly a year ago on Weekender Records.

Today sees the release of the first proper full length record by The Indelicates. American Demo is almost exactly what the title implies. Essentially a collection of their main songs (albeit rather spruced up versions) and a handful of new tracks, it’s a handy primer for those who haven’t really taken them in beforehand. While this means the album lacks a certain flow, it’s still a nice little collection of enjoyable songs that might find them a slightly larger audience.

Well, Eddie Argos at least. I don’t know enough about what the other members look like to tell if they are here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were.

This video is for the upcoming single release of Julia, We Don’t Live In The 60s, which will be released next month on Weekender Records. The video features our merry band marching on Camden with placards declaring “it could be worse”, “it’s fine” and “the grass is green enough”. Which must have baffled the locals a little.

MP3 The Indelicates – Fun Is For The Feeble Minded
MP3 The Indelicates – New Art For The People
MP3 The Indelicates – Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die

The Indelicates: Website || Myspace

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.

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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)

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.

The Tacticians are two brothers called Joe and Ollie who have been making a small name for themselves through constant gigging around London and their ability to craft an excellent pop song. A song with a title like ‘Hardcore Porn’ might bring up images of Barenaked Ladies style wackyness, but it’s actually an endearing tale about friendships that drift apart. It’s this skill to make an upbeat, simple sounding song that actually masks a deeper layer of complexity underneath that demonstrates the subtle skill to be found in their songwriting. I can see these guys developing quite the following as we move through the year.

MP3 The Tacticians – Hardcore Porn (expired)
MP3 The Tacticians – London’s Alright (expired)

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Speaking of The Tacticians, they are featured on an upcoming collection featuring the very best in new music coming out of the London scene. Entitled ‘Baby I’m Yours’, the release from DC Baby Records also includes Another Form of Relief favourites Beeches alongside other such great acts as Kill Electric and The Distance. It’s out next monday (January 29), and the label will be celebrating with a launch gig this saturday at The Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden where a whole bunch of the bands on the collection will be playing. Best of all, it’ll only cost you a mere £3 to get in. I’m sure I’ll be writing about this collection in more closely in the near future, but for now you can get more details from the DC Baby website, where you can also listen to the collection in full.

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It had to happen eventually. Somebody has put together a “lost episode” of Seinfeld and put it up on Youtube. It’s a very clever splicing of various Seinfeld clips, Michael Richards’ comedy club rant and his subsequent apology on Letterman. It shouldn’t work, but it’s pretty damn funny.

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Just when you think that Kent is entirely devoid of musical excitement, not one, but two fantastic gigs come along. Unfortunately, they are on the same day, so you’re going to have to take your pick. Both of these shows are this Friday (January 26). Both will start around 8pm, and both will cost you a few pounds to get into. None of which is too vague at all.

First off, recent discoveries Andrej and Tim will be playing at the Tunbridge Wells Forum. The show looks like being a lot of fun, and I’m assured that there will be Shakespeare passages and possibly even a Christina Aguilera cover involved. You really can’t go wrong with that, can you?

While I would love to be there for that, I’m going to be seeing The Indelicates at The Command House in Chatham. Decent gigs in Kent are rare enough, but ones within Medway are the kind of thing that demands a parade. For those unfamiliar, The Indelicates have a sound that’s somewhere in between The Pogues and Kate Bush. ‘New Art For The People’ comes across as a latter day ‘Fairytale of New York’, ‘Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die’ is a scathing attack on those that attack him but still follow his every move, while ‘Julia, We Don’t Live In The 60s’ is just a perfect pop song. Oh, and if that isn’t enough for you, one of them is an ex-Pipette and they are best friends with Art Brut.

MP3 The Indelicates – Julia, We Don’t Live In The 60s (expired)
MP3 The Indelicates – New Art For The People (expired)
MP3 The Indelicates – Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die (expired)

Los Campesinos!
Sky Larkin
Kate Nash
The Indelicates
Johnny Foreigner

What do all of these artists have in common? It isn’t that they are all great, even if that is indeed the case. It’s that I am a big fan of all of them and yet I don’t own a single thing that they have released. Why not? Because all of their releases are on vinyl.

Technically Los Campesinos!, Sky Larkin and Kate Nash haven’t actually released anything yet, but in the coming weeks they will all release debut singles. All of these will be on the 7″ format. I don’t know a great deal about how the industry works on a financial level, but can someone explain to me exactly why this is the case? Surely a CD is far cheaper to produce than vinyl, and surely more people have access to CD players than to record players. So what possible reason is there for cutting out a chunk of the market?

You could argue that there is always a digital alternative as most of these songs will made available as downloads at the same time. I’m sorry though, but the day I pay £1 for a DRM infested piece of crap from iTunes will be the day that I’m done with music. It isn’t an elitist “I want a tangiable product” thing, however nice that is. I understand that for small bands digital distribution is a fantastic thing, and would support it, if only I could do whatever I wanted with the songs I’d paid for on whatever devices I choose to.

All of which leaves me with no legal means with which to obtain releases from the above artists. This essentially forces my hand into downloading copies, which really doesn’t help anybody. It’s actually getting to the point where I’m considering getting a basic record player (and whatever I’d need to rip them to mp3) just to be able to get hold of these releases. Which all seems a bit silly in this day and age.

So can anyone explain this to me? Is there a good reason for the upsurge in vinyl releases? Am I missing out on something spectacular?

I know I didn’t do a ‘Way Back Whensday’ feature yesterday. I haven’t abandoned it after only two weeks, I just don’t have the time to do both it and one of these countdown posts on the same day. Rest assured it’ll be returning next week when we’re be back to having very little else to write about.

#29
The Young Republic
‘Modern Plays’

Website
Myspace

One of my favourite discoveries of the past year or so was The Young Republic. In fact, they were one of the bands I wanted to babble about that indirectly prompted me into starting this thing, and they become the first band I ever wrote about. Now I don’t know if ‘Modern Plays’ is actually from 2006 as I’m thinking that the EP it’s from was released late in 2005, but it’s one of the songs that I’ve played the most in the last year, so it makes the list. While it was easy in the early days to assign The Young Republic a label of being like Belle & Sebastian, they have grown far more abstract with each release. This song even manages to have a mini jam session in the middle of it, which still all comes together again for one final round of the chorus. About as perfect as indie folk pop can get.

#28
The Indelicates
‘New Art For The People’

Website
Myspace

The Indelicates is largely the project of Simon and Julia Indelicate, which may not be of a great deal of interest. What might be though is that Julia used to be a part of The Pipettes before departing the band sometime last year. This is what led me to The Indelicates, and the most fun part of it all is that they are the far better band. It’s hard to pigeonhole them as each song seems to sound so different to the last, but what we’ve got here are a lot of witty, down to earth lyrics sung by a gruff male voice and a sweet female one. ‘New Art For The People’ is the best example of this, a charming tale about two people who really don’t like each other but stay together in a band because they are successful. With it’s back and forth deliveries and rising final section, it all comes across a little bit like a modern version of ‘Fairytale of New York’.

#27
Sky Larkin
‘Traits and Traitors’

Website
Myspace

Sky Larkin are one of the British “success stories” of 2006, and that will hopefully continue through 2007. Through a bunch of great songs on their Myspace page to gigging the hell out of their native Leeds and London, the band have built up quite a formiddable following. ‘Traits and Traitors’ is one of their darker songs, all moody arrangements and refined vocals. Big things loom for 2007, including a release of their debut single, ‘One of Two’ in January and a small tour with fellow AFoR favourite Los Campesinos! in March.

#26
Voxtrot
‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’

Website
Myspace

What can I say about Voxtrot that hasn’t already been said? They have pretty much dominated indie blogs over the past year and now seem to be crossing over into the mainstream. I still think that the ‘Raised By Wolves’ EP is better than the ‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’ one, but this song still stands out entirely. Trying to find a band that could craft songs in a finer manner than Voxtrot would be an almost impossible task. The words, the textures, the depth. All perfect.

#25
I’m From Barcelona
‘We’re From Barcelona’

Website
Myspace

Coming off like a rather less creepy version of The Polyphonic Spree, the 29 members of Sweden’s I’m From Barcelona (go figure) simply bring pop songs that are full of joy. Incredibly simplistic pop songs at that take. Take introduction song ‘We’re From Barcelona’ for example: it only actually has eight lines that it just repeats a couple of times. But who really cares when it all sounds as gleeful as this? If you’re not singing along to “love is a feeling that we don’t understand / but we’re gonna give it to you” within a couple of plays, you’re dead inside.

#24
Cansei De Ser Sexy
‘Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above’

Website
Myspace

The second song from CSS to make our list, and by far their strongest. It runs the risk of being overrun by the style over substance thing and it’s almost too post-modern for it’s own good, but it sounds too good to dislike. It’s all sultry vocals and overblown synth with a nod and a wink, but that’s what makes CSS so much fun in the first place. It even manages to have a little Death From Above 1979 style breakdown in the middle of it, just to make music geeks like me happy. One of the best videos of the year too.

#23
Human Television
‘I Laughed’

Website
Myspace

I’ve loved Human Television since their ‘All Songs Written By’ EP nearly four years ago, and thought for some time that they were destined to do nothing more than those seven lovely songs. Then out of nowhere a new album appeared, led by ‘I Laughed’, which proved that hadn’t skipped a beat in the gap in between and had maybe picked up a couple of new ones. Nothing is all that different from the EP with it’s gentle guitar and smooth harmonies, but the songwriting has certainly improved, and an addition of a female vocalist to the mix does them no harm at all.

#22
The Besties
‘Prison Song’

Website
Myspace

I’ve been meaning to write about The Besties for the longest time, but never seemed to get around to actually typing anything. This means they are probably only one of only a handful of bands that have made this list without anything more substantial on the site. For those unfamiliar, The Besties are a three-piece twee pop band from Brooklyn. All of their songs tell adorable little stories, and ‘Prison Song’ is at the forefront of these. Harmonies, melodies and nice little lyrics rule the day here.

#21
Los Campesinos!
‘Death To Los Campesinos!’

Website
Myspace

I’ve already prattled on about Cardiff’s Los Campesinos! over and over, so there isn’t very much more that I can add here. They are easily in my list of the top five bands of the year, and all of that is based on a four song EP entitled ‘Hold On Now Youngster’. Four songs of perfect pop bliss full of all of the elements I love, their next twelve months should be fascinating to watch. Only forming early in 2006, they were propelled into the limelight and were garnering label interest before they had even played ten gigs. They signed to Wichita (home of Bloc Party) at the end of the year, and a double a-side debut single (‘We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives’ / ‘Don’t Make Me Do The Math(s)’) is to follow in the new year.

#20
Shake My Hand
‘Invincible’

Website
Myspace

Another band to come out of the seemingly unstoppable Cardiff music scene is Shake My Hand. I actually wrote about these guys earlier on in the year, but they were called Yossarian back then. I’m not entirely sure on the reason for the name change, but it doesn’t matter as they still sound just as good. Wonderfully simple songs about mundane things (“Fancy a cup of tea? / Fuck, we’ve got no milk / Ben, d’you fancy going down the shop?”) all delivered in the kind of bored vocal style that makes The Rakes so enjoyable.

Whenever I discover a new band, I tend to start exploring around them. This means I investigate side projects, other bands members may have been in previously and the such. After my recent appreciation of The Pipettes, I looked into their history a little more and found that there was another Pipette originally, who left the band last year. Discovering that she’s now in another band piqued my interest a little, and thus I discovered The Indelicates.

Although there are five band members, the band is essentially the project of Julia and Simon Indelicate (what is it with bands doing this these days?), who bring us a sound that’s somewhere between The Pogues and Kate Bush. This is most notable on ‘New Art For The People’, which plays like a slightly more positive ‘Fairytale of New York’. Gruff male and sweet female vocals go back and forth until the song decides to rock hard in the final verse. ‘Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die’ does exactly what it says on the tin, playing more as an attack on the people focusing on him than the singer himself though. ‘Julia, We Don’t Live In The 60s’ is the simplest song here, yet it may also be the catchiest.

The band seem to be picking up a lot of good press of late, with mentions in The NME, Rolling Stone and somehow, even The New Statesman. Oh, and Eddie Argos considers himself a fan, and you can’t get a better endorsement than that. On a personal level, it seems that they have played not five miles from where I live on more than one occasion, and once again I’ve failed to discover a great little band until after they went away again. I really need to keep a closer eye on the local “scene” if this is the kind of thing that I’m missing.

MP3 The Indelicates – Waiting For Pete Doherty To Die (expired)
MP3 The Indelicates – New Art For The People (expired)
MP3 The Indelicates – Julia, We Don’t Live In The 60s

The Indelicates: Website || Myspace