Another Form of Relief

I’ve written previously about how I’m not entirely convinced by Rose Elinor Dougall’s solo material away from The Pipettes. My reservations are somewhat relieved at this point, if only because of Start/Stop/Synchro and how much better it seems to become with each repeated listen. I have no idea whether future songs will be able to live up to this, but I’m a little more optimistic about it at this point.

I usually avoid posts that only contain video too, but I really like this one. The stark black and white photography is a thing of beauty and seems to fit the mood of the song perfectly. It all feels a little art school film project at times, which I suppose fits the desired purpose of being the exact opposite of a Pipettes video.

Start/Stop/Synchro is out now on 7″ and download via Elefant Records. The label is jointly organising the Indietracks Festival next month, where Dougall will be playing on the opening night.

I wasn’t really bothered one way or the other when The Pipettes broke up last year. Sure, I quite liked some of their songs, but the whole thing felt like an exercise in the novelty band. Entertaining enough, but something that would wear thin very quickly. So one album and then done worked well enough for me.

Then last year I received a song by Rose Elinor Dougall, seemingly the first of them to launch an inevitable solo career. The song didn’t do much for me, coming across as sonic experimentation than anything resembling a pop record, but hey, who am I to judge? It meant I wasn’t overly excited to receive and listen to Start/Stop/Synchro though.

Thankfully though, the song seems to have found the happy middle ground between the kind of dream pop that now seems to hold Dougall’s attention and The Pipettes. Hell, the introduction even sounds like something that could have come from that band. It evolves into something more though, the sparse arrangement rising throughout, but with most of the song hanging on Dougall’s voice. Her voice is the stand-out here, easily moving from the strong to the wounded as the song requires.

I’m still not entirely sold on this project. I suspect some of her experimentation will turn out to be too much, too soon when put down in album form. From the evidence of Start/Stop/Synchro though, there is something valuable here in the voice. It just needs to find the right outlet.

Start/Stop/Synchro will be released on June 8 via Elefant Recordings. Vinyl only.

I’m well aware that ‘The Pipettes’ are still around and possibly recording, but honestly, if you’ve lost two thirds of your band members, you’re not the same band.

I get through a lot of music in a month, which is probably obvious given I have to find material for this thing constantly. A lot of what I hear is rubbish. A reasonable amount is great and that’s the part that ends up being featured on the blog. There’s also a third section though: simply good music that I don’t write about for a number of reasons. This could be that I’ve just featured someone and then found a new song, or it’s an older band that everyone already knows that I only just discovered. Whatever the reason, it’s good music, so I’m going to start including it here. At the end of each month, I’m going to feature these “leftovers”. Seeing as July was such a good month for music, there’s some fantastic little songs here.

MP3 Kate Nash – Little Red (expired)
MP3 Kate Nash – The Shit Song (expired)
I’ve written endlessly about Kate Nash in the past, so I didn’t include these songs on the blog before. One is a new song, the other is one that wasn’t previously available for download. Both now are though, so they are going up here. ‘The Shit Song’ is the new one that is pretty simplistic (the chrous is basically “don’t give me shit because you’re full of it”), but it’s pretty fun, and at only two minutes, doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. ‘Little Red’ is pretty much the most developed song so far from Nash though. The piano jumps all over the place, the lyrics are the most complex so far and her voice is sounding more and more confident. The sound quality is once again pretty poor on both of these, but apparently she’ll be recording some higher quality ones soon. Which will probably give me another excuse to include them on here.

MP3 Destroyer – Your Blood (expired)
I avoided Destroyer for the longest time. It was one of those things where I had a massively wrong impression about what kind of music it was. I know I shouldn’t do that, but once you get an idea stuck in your head, it’s pretty hard to get past it. For some reason I believed Destroyer was some abstract instrumental group or something, and that kept me away. I have no idea why I thought that, particularly given that I quite like The New Pornographers. I really should have known that it was one of the guys from there, but there you go. Seems I can be ignorant too. The best part about this for me has been discovering a wonderful new project. Particularly given that I find The New Pornographers kind of dull when hearing more than a couple of songs at a time, but these songs are far more enjoyable. ‘Your Blood’ is about my favourite so far, but I’ve still got a lot more material to get through.

MP3 The Pipettes – We Are The Pipettes (expired)
The Pipettes are another band that I’m somewhat late to the party on. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I first heard them a couple of years ago performing a live set on XFM, and thought they sounded great. Then I downloaded some songs and found them kind of dull. An impression that stuck even through this year’s blog explosion and excellent reviews. I heard one song the other day though and I really enjoyed it, so I got some more, and they are far better than I recall. Whether this is thanks to a change in their sound or a change in my tastes I don’t know, but I’m finding them to be an awful lot of fun now. Not quite enough to pick up the album or anything, but it’s good stuff.

MP3 Say Hi To Your Mom – Let’s Talk About Spaceships
This is something of an older song, but it’s new to me, hence why it’s here. This is one of the bands where I downloaded some songs simply because I liked the band name and song titles. They turned out to be better than I expected though, and ‘Let’s Talk About Spaceships’ is one of my favourite things that I’ve discovered lately. It has this wonderfully innocent quality about wanting to talk about stupid things instead of slightly more important issues like a relationship that’s collapsing. A lot of their songs seem to have this kind of melancoly feel to them, so they are getting a fair amount of play at the moment. It still amazes me just how many bands that are already well established that I can be completely unaware of. It does make finding new stuff very entertaining though.