Video Vacuum - Shonen Knife, Summer Flake, The Spook School, Cool Sounds

Bloody Hell! Another week, same as the bloody last. May as well waste some time looking at music videos I mean spreadsheets...

Let's all take a note out of Shonen Knife's book then. They have been powering on for 35 years now, look great, and show no sign of losing their mojo or slowing down. Their 19th album Adventure came out last week, it's great, as is this video for 'Jump Into The New World'. The matching clothes, the lead solo, the grins, the laughs - if only you were having this much fun. Which you aren't, and probably never will be. Sigh...at least this song is so infectious you can pretend, right? RIGHT?

Summer Flake continues to kick serious goals. New album Hello Friends is glorious, and really deserves to go gangbusters. Henry Rollins digs it, and you don't wanna fuck with that man. Now we have visuals for 'Wine Won't Wash Away', the most "rock" song on the album. The footage is passing of strange and wonderful signs or images of travelling across the wide land of USA - from wedding chapels of Las Vegas, to alien faces, to wandering ponies and a driveway that looks suspiciously like Walter White's, it manages to capture the innate beauty and incredulity one feels as they travel in an exciting, hitherto unknown land. I felt that rush as I watch this again and again - unhealthy, seeing as it's a looooong way until my holidays...

Another record I am a massive fan of is The Spook School's Try To Be Hopeful. Here, on their video for 'Speak When You're Spoken To', we open in a pet store run by comedian Josie Long, who is trying to guess what the customer wants without letting him say a word. And when he finally gets in what he wants - something a little more "alternative" - he walks out with The Spook School! Afterwards we get the requisite pet things - walking, fetching, hiding, taking photos, running away, getting put in the pound - with a twist in the tail (see what I did there? Awww). The band play with the excellent Paws (where have they been lately?) at London's Moth Club July 2 as part of a long UK tour - very excited about this one!

And then we have the sultry grooves of Cool Sounds...and this bloody weird video, where the members make out with strange inanimate objects. They all approach their love in different ways - Zac comes across as a Lothario with his rock, while Nick seems uber earnest in his affections for his toaster. Of course Snowy would get overly sexual with a hammer, though... 'In Blue Skies' marks the incoming 3rd LP Dance Moves. NOTE: is that a stapler in your pants, or are you just pleased to see the paperweight?

Now get back to work!

Sports Is Everything

I wasn’t expecting All of Something, the new album from Ohio’s SPORTS, to floor me the way it has. It’s pretty obvious that I love 90s guitar rock, whether it be college-era esotericism, gangly instrumental playfulness, slacker ne’er-do-wells, or dirge-like spikes of gravel-spewed aggression. But I am finding that the past month I have been falling into a lighter-limbed sonic freefall, with the likes of The Spook School, Diet Cig, Summer Flake and now Sports being my go to bands to listen to as the days get ever shorter here in London. 

Despite the plain name with the connotations of machismo and parochial rabid savagery, Sports is much more earnest and heartfelt, but without the mawkish histrionics. The album is still very much a microcosm of love and other catastrophes on the cusp of leaving adolescence truly behind, but the songs have sonic bark and verbal bite, both playful and damaged, and is a surprise tour-de-force of indie guitar pop abandon. You have the boppy, giddy C86 of 'Saturday' and 'GDP', the maudlin bedroom strum of 'Clean Socks', the urgent earnestness of 'The Washing Machine.' 'Getting On In Spite Of You' is anthemic in the most honest and carefree of ways, and 'Reality TV' Red Bull-and-hormones punk, somehow both bare-bones and beefy in delivery, with hearts brazenly pinned to the sleeve. It's all about cruising in cars, hopping in beds, falling in and out of love wearing the carapace of nonchalance while the fires burn brightly beneath. 

But the true gem is 'Stunted', which kicks off their second (and rumoured final) album All Of Something, and it is absolutely killer. The quiet opening, the warm crackle and heft of the guitars as they open up, the drums becoming a clear driving force as the final rousing crescendo hits, and the vocals all join together with Carmen Perry as they finally echo out "We both got what we wanted." It's Juliana Hatfield meets Belly meets The Muffs, and it's both 90s nostalgia and all round great universal songwriting. Perry's voice has that Hatfield/Kristin Hersh twang that could either be 90s American guitar pop twee or country and western whimsy, but is commanding all the time. I am a massive fan of this song in particular, this album in general, and Sports as a whole. If they are drifting apart, let's hope that Perry and co find other ways to give their all to something that we can all enjoy. All of Something is out now through Father/Daughter Records - get it now!

Trying Not To Be Spooked Or Schooled

I have been the sole inhabitant on Planet Masala for some time now – Paul and Ani fled some time ago, and Fred is too busy playing with the cool kids to hang out in the basement (AKA life). That said, Fred still lurks around the Records side of things, and I always hope to entice him into doing the rare obtuse review. One of the first he did for Sonic Masala was for Edinburgh band The Spook School. They return this month with new record Try To Be Hopeful (out through Fire Records) and it stays true to form, offering cantankerous guitar pop that still focuses squarely on being different, and how that is awesome. Having thrashed things out in the bustling UK queer punk scene (which sees the likes of Teenage Caveman and As Ondas plying their trade), it is clear that the four-piece are just as indebted to Joanna Gruesome and C86 navel-gazing, especially on the buoyant noise that permeates hook-laden tracks like ‘Friday Night’. The album opens with ominous named ‘Burn Masculinity’, but isn’t as subversive and evasive as this may sound – it’s a blast. Yes, The Spook School is being more upfront lyrically when it comes to exploring sexual identity and how labels can be still so arduously constricting and caustic. This is evident in vocalist Nye Todd's physical presence too - going through a trans identity transference, which has seen his voice change over the course of the recording process. A true transformation in more ways than one, Try To Be Hopeful is ebullient, a joyous kicking out at the pricks and embracing of the awkward, the marginalised, and being proud of it. This is mostly encompassed by 'Binary', a propulsive rocker gem that questions gender norms and embraces the messiness of it all. I'm thinking that I'm hexadecimal, indeed.

The School of Hard Liquor and High Spirits

The Spook School will teach you how to have fun and how not to pour beer.

After a week spent hopped up on cold and flu tablets, trying to write an assignment on the epistemology of time, I found that I was wasting quite a lot of it (time, that is. No pseudoephedrine was wasted in the passing of it). See though, what I should have been doing instead of reading about the Scottish enlightenment was getting a ticket to Scotland to get some real-time enlightenment. I'll be honest, I'll tell the Spook School what I really think of them, hopped up or not; they are a freaking awesome collection of properties.

And while my bank account probably won't support the whole Scotland idea, at least I can rest assured that us Aussies, thanks to 'Niall's Sexy Calendar 2014', we'll always have our very own little bit of The Spook School love to have and to hold.

Oh yeah, and what's more, there's now a whole album worth of this goodness out for your enjoyment - on cherry cola coloured vinyl, no less! Get your copy of Dress Up (out now through Fortuna Pop!) from their bandcamp, pour yourself an enormously frothy beer and get prepared for your crush to continue!



The Dead Identity

I have to admit a penchant for horizontal stripes and tape machines; The Spook School seem to have all bases covered. And, and, and the guitars, and the back-and-forth vocals, and the song titles ('Can You Ever Trust a Man who Thinks Matt Damon's Really Cool?')! I want to be there jumping on the bed when they hit 'record' - and hit record.

I'm smiling and I don't know why, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm more than a little enamoured. Much more. I know that for sure.


I Don't Know, You Don't Know, We Both Don't Know has a 'super limited!' cassette release through Soft Power Records. And if any Spook School mates live in Australia, it's time you asked them over to visit.