No future in nostalgia

October 19, 2008 in Music | Tags: Grantura, Rockingbirds | No comments

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, Grantura are also blending some of the same inspirations as the Bye Bye Blackbirds to good effect, only without quite synthesising them into an overall sound. The first five songs on In dreams and other stories owe their largest debt to a band each. In order, my ears hear the Monkees, the Byrds, the Rockingbirds, the La’s (that’s a gimme – the song is called ‘Lazarus’ and its opening lines are ‘Nobody thought that we’d see him again / Everybody thought he had gone’), and the Coral, though it’s likely that Grantura sound like the latter and the Rockingbirds as a result of listening to the same source material. These multiple personalities become less surprising when you note that there are three separate writers at work for four of those five songs, with all of them coming together for ‘Lazarus’; and until you get to the seventh song, you’ve heard nothing of Grantura’s fourth composer, who dominates the end of the record. But it’s more CSNY than a compilation album by Various Artists. ‘Waves’ rocks and rolls jauntily, sweetly nuzzling itself into your sleepy, drowning brain, while ‘In dreams’ is the hit single the Byrds forgot to pen. Lee Mavers would probably settle for ‘Lazarus’ in his mind’s eye (if not in its executed form). And would I be right to guess that ‘Land of the big skies’ owes a debt to an East Anglian or Fenland childhood? Not so much country rock as Norfolk county rock.

The Rockingbirds offered a more convincing British interpretation of a truth about enzyte sound whose starting point was GP / Grievous angel, which is not to say that Grantura haven’t made a decent record, for they have; but the great play of musical influence back and forth across the Atlantic has worked its best magic when a group on one side twisted a sound to its own ends rather than simply borrow its framework. I’d like to see Grantura twisting harder, or – without wishing to precipitate a band split – what might happen were each writer to go his separate way. Who would be the Neil Young, and who Crosby, Stills or Nash?
We never did anything the easy way

October 15, 2008 in Music | Tags: Bye Bye Blackbirds | No comments

‘The type of pop band that the great John Peel would have championed’ says label American Dust of the Bye Bye Blackbirds. Possibly not, for on occasion John’s ears were resolutely cloth; he failed to pick up on any number of great groups who chose to major on the song rather than on sound and/or attitude; take Flying Nun – although he favoured the Chills with sessions, I don’t recall him ever playing the Verlaines or Sneaky Feelings. The Bye Bye Blackbirds acknowledge their affection for the out-of-time, out-of-place songcraft of the Sneakys, and for the kind of harmonic soaking that you get when listening to the Everly Brothers (it’s well worth reading what Bradley from the BBBs has to say about Don and Phil). And if you hear the Byrds, well then, that’s because the Blackbirds are the genuine West Coast article, and their harmonies and that Rickenbacker psychedelia are in the blood, just as the Scouse veins of the Coral and Shack are shot through with the melodic surprise and transcendent guitar of the Beatles (if you’ll forgive me for using that particular metaphor about Michael Head).

Their 2006 debut Honeymoon has these ingredients, plus the interplay of two tones of guitar, a deeper growl and a lighter jangle. There are sixties sunshine melodies straight out of the Brill Building, or perhaps an office close by, and in ‘How I knew it wasn’t love’ and ‘Quiet confusion’ perfectly pitched songs whose blue shades beg for and get the pedal steel guitar they crave. The Blackbirds are also expert in varying the mood of a song, giving the saccharine sweet and prairie bright ‘Needle-in-a-haystack girls’ a darkly brooding Byrdsian coda, while ‘After work’ is perhaps their take on the Sneaky Feelings’ ‘Better than before’, with vocal lines exchanged much as the Jasmine Minks did on their Creation garage classic ‘What’s gone wrong’.

Freely available for download is the Apology accepted EP, featuring an impressively robust reading of the Go-Betweens song that I much prefer over the one by Kelman which appears on Love goes on: a tribute to Grant McLennan, and on ‘Monster eyes’, a melodically excellent setting of lyrics by Jonathan Lethem (from his novel You don’t love me yet, as yet unread by this admirer of The fortress of solitude) together with acoustic versions of songs which appear on Honeymoon and Houses and homes, their recently released album, which is winging its way to me from the States as I post.
The Bye Bye Blackbirds
The Bye Bye Blackbirds (MySpace)
Riding on the crest of a new wave

October 13, 2008 in Fanzines, Music | Tags: Claim, Heavenly Records, Manic Street Preachers | No comments

Appearing around the time that the Manic Street Preachers took to the stage to help celebrate Heavenly’s eighteenth birthday last month, here is a great interview by Simon Price with Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield. It focusses on their time on the Heavenly label, and includes some reflections on the group’s first London outing, promoted (I use that word in its loosest sense) by ‘mod English eccentric’ Kevin Pearce. Bob Stanley wasn’t the only one laughing that night – the Manics compelled a reaction, and the laughter was instinctive; pleasure that they were as over the top as they were, mixed with an undercurrent of derision (for they seemed ludicrously deluded), and possibly an edge of hysteria at what might happen next.

There are honourable mentions in the interview for the Claim and Bullfrog fanzine (edited by Chris Jones who is discussed elsewhere in these pages), apparently a favourite of James’. The tone of the interview is affectionate and humble, and it’s hard not to smile at the idea of Jeff Barrett and Martin Kelly as an indie version of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor.
By the end I was glad that it was just a dream

October 13, 2008 in Fanzines, Music | Tags: Laugh | No comments

Great YouTube find by Fruitier than thou – a video for ‘Paul McCartney’ by Laugh. It’s a pity that Laugh didn’t make a full LP in the style of this and ‘Take your time yeah!’ to compare and contrast with the one they did make for Heavenly’s predecessor Sub Aqua; by the time that possibility was on the table, they had developed the sequenced syncopation that Mancunian groups in the eighties seemed inevitably drawn towards. They did it with style and substance, as the Sensation number one LP bears out. Or would, if anyone had the nous to reissue it.

Fruitier also offers a range of other delights, including radio sessions by High Five and Prefab Sprout, live sets by Felt and the Go-Betweens, and – with its editor’s permission – a full scan of I think the first issue of Hungry beat (Kevin will correct me if I’m wrong, though he may not thank me for pointing you in its direction).
There’s ink on your hands

October 13, 2008 in Music | Tags: Jon Savage, Paul Weller | 1 comment

This Guardian Film and Music article by Matt Bolton will make you laugh, if it doesn’t depress you. For those who have no time to depress themselves to the fullest extent, here are a selection of quotes from ‘Class war on the dancefloor’:

“I think having working-class roots does mean better songs as they are songs the majority can relate to,” he told the Sun. “If you live in a castle, you’re going to write about living in a castle and who wants to hear a fucking song about a castle?”

“You’ve got to be careful, because you can damage the credibility of your indie label if you force them to put out some crap you’ve just signed. But it’s about putting the band in context for the media and for fans. If you put them out on a certain indie label, it puts them into the context and aesthetic of that label, and leads people to think they must be similar to their other bands. It doesn’t even matter what they sound like - it’s all just codes and clues as to what you’re trying to do.”

“I always thought the point about rock music was transformation, about becoming something different, something other, something glamorous, something inspiring, and that means stepping outside your allotted class role if you can. But bands like Oasis or Paul Weller just encouraged a lot of kids just to stay in their roles, and that kind of social realism is very trite and very dull.”

These views seem to rest on randomly selecting a few indie groups and then lining half up as posh public school, and half as working class reactionaries straight out of the local comp. The proponents’ approach is uniformly specious in their willingness to disregard the range of independent music in the 21st century and in refusing to think about, to take just one obvious example, the Arctic Monkeys – like or loathe them, you have to admit that they sit in neither of these two camps, but are well-placed to take the mickey out of an industry whose marketing is as crass as this article suggests.

Jon Savage (owner of the third quote) has form here, for he is not letting on about his own prejudices, laid out as long ago as England’s dreaming, if not before. He might espouse a desire for us all to attain a state of classlessness in which artistic expression is allowed free reign, but he has always favoured the art school over those who left school at fourteen without any qualifications, and he’s always had it in for Paul Weller; to say that Weller (or even Noel Gallagher) ‘encouraged a lot of kids just to stay in their roles’ is patently daft – he was constantly attempting to evade the limitations with which others liked to saddle him, and in that any perceptive observer would see a suggestion that his fans should do likewise. I don’t even need to mention the Style Council, do I?