Aching For Missed Codeine

Sad to hear last week that the brilliant Codeine aren't staying together long enough to come to Australia. My friend Cam bought some limited edition thingame of theirs that I'll have to listen to just to stop from falling apart. Nevertheless, it is the music that always lives on. Here is something that they recorded for the John Peel Sessions back in the day.

Codeine - Median (live at John Peel Sessions)

Travolta Given The Chance At Another Comeback - via Oxford

The Rock Of Travolta hail from Oxford, a place that along with Leeds has produced its fair share of post rock behemoths in the past. The quintet have been around for a while - their last LP, the critically well-received and John Peel endorsed Uluru, came out eight years ago back in 2003, and Radiohead personally chose them to support them after its release - and finally, after a self-imposed exile and a lineup change, they are ready to drop their newie, Fine Lines.

The band - Jennie Bates alternating between playing bass, keyboards and cello, Matt Spooner playing guitar, bass and keyboards, Dave Warrington on guitar, Joe Durow on drums and Jon Carter playing bass - have carved out nine songs of bombastic, meaty riffs, coupled with thunderous percussive beats and atmospherics due to electronic glitches and the majesty of strings. There are times that you feel it shouldn't work, especially on opener 'Rock By Numbers', but it invariably does - 'The Goddamn Remote' is one track that showcases all elements of TROT's repertoire. Yet their most complete piece is the closer 'Something's Wrong With The TV Generation' - a slow building track that follows in the tire tracks of Mono or Slint at their earliest and most beautifully brutal. Good stuff.

Fine Lines is out on Big Red Sky Records on March 14th. The Rock Of Travolta will be playing at Monto Water Rats March 9th - well worth checking out.

The Rock Of Travolta - Last March Of The Acolytes
The Rock Of Travolta - Something's Wrong With The TV Generation

The Friday Cover Up - A Faith Healing S.O.S

Its been a busy week but a lack of posts in the week's tail will never stop The Friday Cover Up. Really the band that provide this week's Cover Up deserve multiple posts so I may be forced to follow up a proper history/introduction in another post soon. Thanks goes to Th' Faith Healers for a cheeky takes Abba's S.O.S and just for good measure I've also included their even cheekier take on Mariah Carey's Without You (I can't believe that I've just typed that name on SM!). Both covers were recorded for the band's five Peel Sessions between 1992 and 1994. Apparently John Peel was very fond of the Th' Faith Healers cover of Without You... and to complete a hat-trick of covers I've also included a rather less playful cover of Can's Mother Sky that featured on the L.P Lido.

I'm not going to go into a prolonged history of Th' Faith Healers, wikipedia can do that for you, but Th' Faith Healers were a band I stumbled apon, thanks to Mr Peel, when I was only 13. They always fitted somewhere between shoegaze and early brit pop for me, and I loved them for it -My Bloody Valentine and early Blur were vices at the time. Needless to say seeing the band reform to play ATP last year took me straight back to my adolescent bedroom and desperately recording Peel sessions on my knackered old tape machine. One unappreciated band much appreciated by a very excited 13/29 year old kid. Hope you appreciate their three slices of cover up fun.

Th' Faith Healers - S.O.S
Th' Faith Healers - Without You
Th' Faith Healers - Mother Sky