The Wave Pictures - Sweetheart EP (Moshi Moshi)
I'm scared the Wave Pictures will give up writing songs soon. David Tattersall's voice isn't, and probably won't, get any less whiny than it is on 'Cinnamon Baby'. His crowdpleasing lengthy guitar solos are being featured prominently on record. The title track of this six-song EP and the closer, the Springsteen-influenced (they recorded a covers album, given away as a free CD-R, last year) 'American Boom', are balladic, the latter acoustic- and bass-led.
But this record is so much more immediately likeable than 'If You Leave it Alone', perhaps because it comes about as 'polished' or defined as the Wave Pictures are ever going to sound on record. 'American Boom' might be about the life of Howard Hughes, although it sounds a million times more personal, but it still manages to combine beautiful, no-longer-completely-abrasive indie pop with excellent wordplay, about being on "the cricket pitch, with cracked lips, in the middle of winter". It's got the fast-paced 'Kittens', a recording of old track 'I Shall Be A Ditchdigger' that could have found its home on any Wave Pictures release - and another ever-Wave-Pictures gem, 'Sweetheart': about the sweetest thing you'll hear this year.
I know the Wave Pictures will not give up writing songs, at least, not soon. XFM DJ John Kennedy once remarked to me that it seems the Wave Pictures are set against their own success. You could aptly describe the lyrics and the prolific small or non-label releases that seem not to care about 'major press attention' or 'Radio One plays', like, playing unreleased songs on radio sessions when they've just put out their most widely available and acclaimed album (2008's 'Instant Coffee Baby'), as idiosyncratic. It's also uncompromising, like the Fall, except non-Mancunian, for the way lyrics such as 'I Shall Be A Ditchdigger''s "Leroy I'll, Room 302, I'll be there and I'll be waiting for you" will be sung, easily, by fans unaware of their indecipherable meaning, who will decipher it themselves, or not, or embrace it, laugh, love the story.
They're also very British - Pitchfork's review of their first two full-lengths on Moshi Moshi seemed to pick up this as a flaw, an obstruction to achieving US-wide commercial acclaim. But it's David Tattersall's distinctive, Wymeswold-bred voice, their very guitar-led brand of indie pop, their English charm and their ballads and riddles, that have gained them a steadily growing UK audience. I asked bassist Franic Rozycki, and he didn't know who Good Shoes were. They're magnificent, sweet, intelligent and hilarious. And one of the very best things Britain has to offer right now.
Shonen Knife - Supergroup
Kurt Cobain's beloved Shonen Knife sound like a Japanese, female Ramons, in bright colours. Their latest - they've been around, obviously, for a while - bears a title, and a refrain ending "everybody's feeling satisfaction now", marking them up immediately as more a pop-punk band that is comfortable with their own image, than kindred spirits with the Nirvana frontman who struggled against the fact that his anti-consumerist, anti-establishment protest was naturally packaged and sold at great profit by the very capitalist system that was pissing him off so badly. The lack of such internal warfare here makes for a band that, without wanting to be overtly reductive, are more similar to Deerhoof than a Western post-Ramones pop-punk band. No authenticity squabbles. No bemoaning capitalist realism. Satomi-a-like joy is best captured on a track that reminds me of the first time I saw Mudhoney, a track called 'Muddy Bubbles Hell', with gleeful and childish pronunciation of those very words interspersed with brooding Japanese alt-rock heavy riffers. Seconds of this conjured another ludicrous comparison: Boris. And it is all a bit like that: rock music that achieves simplicity, does it well, and is fun. 'Deer Biscuits', about feeding biscuits to deers at the deer park and making them "very happy", is this epitomised: a more formulaic Deerhoof; an actually fun band that sounds like the Ramones. It is a simple, yet strange record, and it is very well produced. Songs about animals... that animals would actually listen to.
I'm scared the Wave Pictures will give up writing songs soon. David Tattersall's voice isn't, and probably won't, get any less whiny than it is on 'Cinnamon Baby'. His crowdpleasing lengthy guitar solos are being featured prominently on record. The title track of this six-song EP and the closer, the Springsteen-influenced (they recorded a covers album, given away as a free CD-R, last year) 'American Boom', are balladic, the latter acoustic- and bass-led.
But this record is so much more immediately likeable than 'If You Leave it Alone', perhaps because it comes about as 'polished' or defined as the Wave Pictures are ever going to sound on record. 'American Boom' might be about the life of Howard Hughes, although it sounds a million times more personal, but it still manages to combine beautiful, no-longer-completely-abrasive indie pop with excellent wordplay, about being on "the cricket pitch, with cracked lips, in the middle of winter". It's got the fast-paced 'Kittens', a recording of old track 'I Shall Be A Ditchdigger' that could have found its home on any Wave Pictures release - and another ever-Wave-Pictures gem, 'Sweetheart': about the sweetest thing you'll hear this year.
I know the Wave Pictures will not give up writing songs, at least, not soon. XFM DJ John Kennedy once remarked to me that it seems the Wave Pictures are set against their own success. You could aptly describe the lyrics and the prolific small or non-label releases that seem not to care about 'major press attention' or 'Radio One plays', like, playing unreleased songs on radio sessions when they've just put out their most widely available and acclaimed album (2008's 'Instant Coffee Baby'), as idiosyncratic. It's also uncompromising, like the Fall, except non-Mancunian, for the way lyrics such as 'I Shall Be A Ditchdigger''s "Leroy I'll, Room 302, I'll be there and I'll be waiting for you" will be sung, easily, by fans unaware of their indecipherable meaning, who will decipher it themselves, or not, or embrace it, laugh, love the story.
They're also very British - Pitchfork's review of their first two full-lengths on Moshi Moshi seemed to pick up this as a flaw, an obstruction to achieving US-wide commercial acclaim. But it's David Tattersall's distinctive, Wymeswold-bred voice, their very guitar-led brand of indie pop, their English charm and their ballads and riddles, that have gained them a steadily growing UK audience. I asked bassist Franic Rozycki, and he didn't know who Good Shoes were. They're magnificent, sweet, intelligent and hilarious. And one of the very best things Britain has to offer right now.
Shonen Knife - Supergroup
Kurt Cobain's beloved Shonen Knife sound like a Japanese, female Ramons, in bright colours. Their latest - they've been around, obviously, for a while - bears a title, and a refrain ending "everybody's feeling satisfaction now", marking them up immediately as more a pop-punk band that is comfortable with their own image, than kindred spirits with the Nirvana frontman who struggled against the fact that his anti-consumerist, anti-establishment protest was naturally packaged and sold at great profit by the very capitalist system that was pissing him off so badly. The lack of such internal warfare here makes for a band that, without wanting to be overtly reductive, are more similar to Deerhoof than a Western post-Ramones pop-punk band. No authenticity squabbles. No bemoaning capitalist realism. Satomi-a-like joy is best captured on a track that reminds me of the first time I saw Mudhoney, a track called 'Muddy Bubbles Hell', with gleeful and childish pronunciation of those very words interspersed with brooding Japanese alt-rock heavy riffers. Seconds of this conjured another ludicrous comparison: Boris. And it is all a bit like that: rock music that achieves simplicity, does it well, and is fun. 'Deer Biscuits', about feeding biscuits to deers at the deer park and making them "very happy", is this epitomised: a more formulaic Deerhoof; an actually fun band that sounds like the Ramones. It is a simple, yet strange record, and it is very well produced. Songs about animals... that animals would actually listen to.
