Spectral Slumbers Left Up On The Mantle

It's funny how people's taste can be so similar yet so different. A good friend James is into the Fortuna Pop!/Slumberland Records camp 4 lyf, loving the twee ambling pop that comes from these stables. I tend to find that I have to tread carefully in this realm, as for every Veronica Falls there is a mortally twee release that just rubs me up the wrong way. So we often find ourselves at odds when discussing records of this ilk, and nothing has polarised more than Yorkshire bro's Spectrals. Whilst I didn't think much of their debut Bad Penny (here's what I put here), James raved about it being one of the better releases of 2011. Sob Story is their sophomore release, and the tide has turned. Whilst James laments the Jones' turns at countrified twang, I find these slower rambles disarming, especially the title track (probably James' most hated song, so there you go). Louis Jones' voice is incredibly stronger, the confidence dripping off every phrase, whilst the jangly guitars are pristine (thanks to ex-Girl(s) JR White's pretty fantastic production work). I was not expecting much from this album, but from the jumpy washes that echo through 'Milky Way' to the college-radio ramble of 'Karaoke', Sob Story barely puts a foot wrong here. If I still had a car, this would be jammed in the player ad nauseum. Great stuff.

Spectrals - Karaoke 
Spectrals - Milky Way

Yet James and I kissed and made up over Long Enough To Leave, the second LP from San Franciscans The Mantles. I was quietly confident about this one - their Raspberry Thighs 7" from 2011 was a fave of mine - and whilst it mainly avoids the scuzzy garage leanings of prior releases, The Mantles are becoming masters of their minimal garage pop realm. It's still ramshackle, it's filled with more hooks than Moby Dick, it still feels like it's been recorded in the rickety shed at the farthest reach of the backyard, fuelled with cheap wine and Beatles regalia - and it still enamours endlessly. Again, confidence plays a part here - there is no cacophonous outburst because bluster and subterfuge isn't needed to distract from what are essentially warm, relatable pop tunes. 'Reason's Run' is currently my favourite track on here, with it's more ragged, dangerous preamble ('When you saw me ahead, you should’ve crossed the street… you must be more careful about who you meet"), but it's hard to sit still on this. Think early Paul Kelly, the Feelies, the Clean - think whatever you like. The Mantles are holding the whole room together, and it's about time you noticed this.

The Mantles - Raspberry Thighs
The Mantles - Reason's Run

Both albums are available through Slumberland Records - you can get them here.

Menacing Beach Dreams

 

If you know you're early 90s NES (that's Nintendo Entertainment System for those kids where Super Mario Bros. 2 is not cool retro enough for you) you might have heard of, or even played, the platformer Menace Beach. It was fairly bad - you were a skateboarder who had to save your girlfriends by beating up and avoiding ninjas, clowns and the like, all the while your girlfriend is chained up and her clothes are rotting away...really! THAT was the drawcard right there. As a kid it was up there with the "finish Super Metroid in under three hours and you get to see Samus in her briefs" level of prepubescent awesomeness. Or maybe you are familiar with Sunday Funday, which is exactly the same game except you are fighting off bullies, fish and businessmen to get to Sunday school (yes, a Christian computer game, yay). Then there is Miss Peach World, which has Princess from the Mario universe on the cover but doesn’t feature her anywhere, yet the tied up girlfriend’s clothes disappear all together…

 

Then again, it’s best to leave that in the annals of video game direness and focus instead on UK’s Menace Beach, a four-piece with members from the likes of Sky Larking and Hookworms whose abrupt Dream Out EP is pretty damn killer. Four tracks that each struggle to bother two minutes, Dream Out develops as a pill of jagged punk with angular frission and the occasional dalliance with pop, imbuing it all with enough intrigue that these songs feel like a Frank Miller 3D drawing without the glasses – it’s rad and exciting, yet not centred where you think it should be. That is the point though – as with the bizarre contradictions of the various versions of the video game, Menace Beach eschew convention, so even as you jump and dance you do so with an inescapable sense of unease. Discordant pop for the more switched on slackers, who like cerebral stimulants with their Coco Pops.

 

Listen to Dream Out below. It comes out in the next week or so, but be warned - only 50 (!?) of these cassettes have been made, so watch the band's website religiously to get one of these aural hotcakes.

Spectral Pennies Aren't So Bad - More So-So

Spectrals (known as Louis Oliver Jones to his mum) has really tickled the fancy of the blogging world over the past couple years, and with good reason. His rise coincides with a plethora of bedroom dreamers (which number Wild Nothing, Beach Fossils, Cloud Nothings and Hanoi Janes in their midst) whose windswept, reverb-laden wistful pop reinvigorated the idea of what it takes to be a pop artist. The UK act has put out acclaimed releases on the likes of Moshi Moshi and Sex Is Disgusting, but we now have the LP Bad Penny (with Wichita Records fighting off Captured Tracks for the rights to put it out) to play with.

Now, before discussing the album, let me state my opinions here. Like most bedroom projects, the quality of output varies wildly, regardless of what the pop culture intelligentsia like to tell us. The above mentioned bands I enjoy (especially Cloud Nothings and Hanoi Janes), but as with most of the genre trends of the past few years, with the fires fanned by the "cool" generators (no names need to be mentioned), we get a glut of "next big things" that are either too green, unfairly pigeonholed or are just plain shit. It takes the gloss off the achievements of the people who are succeeding at their chosen craft (one case in point - Toro Y Moi and Washed Out's concerted efforts to step away from the tsunami of similar-sounding artists of a sound they invariably created). So, whilst I've liked some of Spectrals' retro 50s/60s pop meanderings, I approached his highly anticipated album with wariness.

Bad Penny is a great name for the album for two reasons. Firstly, it knowingly tips the hat at the style of music he utilises for inspiration - that which is almost half a century old, somewhat innocent and therefore almost rudimentary in its composition. The fact that Jones has that Yorkshire tint (his vocals are incredibly similar to Arctic monkey Alex Turner) also shadows the second reason Bad Penny fits - the idea of the contradiction. And there are many.

Firstly, like Turner, Spectrals specialises in creating addictive, upbeat music to background what are ultimately mawkish, sometimes bitter ruminations on young adulthood, love and life. But truth be told, whilst Spectrals as a live unit (and admittedly on most of the earlier releases) has been entrancing and personable, here the songs verge on the featherlight, almost begging to be liked and in the process becoming a wallflower in the genre as opposed to king of the prom. The English tones over the American sound notwithstanding, the juxtapositions are in the main disappointing. There are good tracks here - 'Big Baby' and 'Luck Is There To Be Pushed' in particular - but in the end Bad Penny, for me, was more of a misspent chance.

But hey, he's 21, and he already has some writing nous - he'll bounce back.

Bad Penny is out now - grab it here.

Spectrals - Baby Love

2010's Best EPs...by David of Art Is Hard Records

Next up on our guest contributors for our best of 2010 is David , one half of the creative minds behind Art Is Hard Records, a new DIY label in the south-west of England doing its darnedest to showcase the best that the region has to offer. Art Is Hard was started by David and a friend who are influenced by the attitude and ethics of labels such as Factory, Wichita, Anticon and Dischord. They put out as their first release a compilation Brink Of The Clouds that brought attention to the likes of Colours, Dutch Husbands and Cycle Schmiechel, combined with an innovative T-shirt promotion - check out our thoughts and some of the tracks here.

"When Sonic Masala asked me to contribute a list to their end of year feature, I set to task with constructing some method of appearing witty and well educated in this year's releases. Unfortunately I am neither, so here is a list of my EP's of the year. "

1. Factory Floor - Untitled (Blast First Petite)

2. Hot Club De Paris - With Days Like This.../ The Rise and Inevitable fall... (Moshi Moshi)

3. Johnny Foreigner - You Thought You Saw.... (Alcopop)

4. Cerebral Ballzy - Live in Toronto (Tape Alarm)

5. Islet - Celebrate This Place (Turnstile)

6. Gold Panda - You (No Town)

7. Yu(c)k - Weakend (Mirror Universe Tapes)

8. Tall Ships - There Is Nothing but Chemistry Here (Big Scary Monsters)

9. Tubelord - Tezcatlipoca (Hassle Records)

10. Spectrals - Extended Play (Moshi Moshi)

See below for a taste of a few of these EPs, and also another taste of Art Is Hard's last release, the 7" split between New Years Evil and The Black Tambourines, here (not Black Tamborine - yes, they are flirting with libel there...)

Yu(c)k - Weakend

Cerebral Ballzy - Anthem

Tall Ships - Books

Tubelord - Ratchet

B.C.'s Shimmering Stars of Yesteryear

The current craze of delving into the bargain bins at the local record store to find a sound that 'needs updating' continues unabated, with varying degrees of success. As is well known here, I have a real love/hate relationship with the bands that infuse their fuzzy lo-fi meanderings with Spectorish atmospherics, shimmering beach riffs and 'sha-la-las'. Shimmering Stars is another such act, yet they are a lo-fi act that do not hide behind their influences - they inhabit them. This British Colombian outfit have just released a 4 track 7" through Almost Musique today, which you can get here. Its...brilliant. Why? Because it perfectly encapsulates their idols - Del Shannon, The Everly Brothers, Phil Spector - whilst infusing these beloved musical tropes with a distinctive modern edge. Take 'Let It Be Me', which incidentally is an Everly Brothers cover. Whilst it comes across as pastiche at first, a la Spectrals or Dum Dum Girls at their slower moments, their is a decided warmth in the offering, and the reverb used is used effectively, rather than just used. The second half of the track builds and builds as the guitars begin to taken on a wider, 90s distorted rumble, before cascading down in glorious feedback, all in under two minutes. Its an amazingly rendered love affair to these boys' childhoods and their familial record collections. Also check out 'Im Gonna Try', that actually sounds like an Everly's outtake! Im not sure how these guys are gonna travel over time, but this 7" (which, at just over seven minutes long, does not outstay its welcome in the slightest!) is mightily impressive.

Shimmering Stars - Im Gonna Try
Shimmering Stars - Let It Be Me

Shimmering Stars - "Sun's Going Down" from Delicious Scopitone on Vimeo.

Cold Pumas Sound Better With Huw?

Huw Stephens of BBC Radio One notoriety has been pushing his claim as new music head honcho. To this end he's been compiling compilations of 'new music' in conjunction with Wichita Recordings. Before I took off on my hols Mr Stephens put out his second such compilation, with artwork by Casey Raymond, which features a previously unreleased track Slow Padding from SM favourites Cold Pumas, as well as tracks from other SM faves such as Fair Ohs, Islet, Spectrals, Cloud Nothings and many more. Its worth a look here.

You can purchase the comp here, its only five quid, and have little taste below. Cold Pumas also have a gig tomorrow, courtesy of Upset The Rhythm (who else?) at The Nest in Dalston with the awesome Nisennenmondai and Waiters

Cold Pumas - Slow Padding

Ghostly Breath Is Fresh

Spectrals - Peppermint from Dan McEvoy on Vimeo.

Fair Ohs speculate

Fair Ohs and a Leeds outfit Spectrals have a new split 7" out today on Tough Love. The perfect mini soundtrack with Spring finally poking its head above winter's parapet (maybe Brendan will even stop moaning about the weather now!) Spectrals have long coveted my attention and Fair Ohs' itchy reverb drenched afro-punk went down a treat when we saw them at Rest is Noise a few weeks ago. Here is one track to lure you in, three more await you on the 7". As good as daffs!

Fair Ohs - Hey Lizzy