Dirty Revolution on Radio 1
Posted by jamie on Feb 24, 2009
Last night (Monday) Dirty Revolution got their anti-racist anthem “I Love Reggae” on Radio 1 again, on Mike Davies’ late night Punk Rock Show.
You can listen again to the show for the next week at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/mikedavies or just email punk.show@bbc.co.uk & asking for more Dirty Revolution.
24/7 need a new bassist
Posted by jamie on Feb 24, 2009
Welsh pop-punkers have 24/7 announced that Alex (vocals/keys) has left the band. The remaining members are going to stay together and Glenn is going to sing. All existing show dates will still go ahead, and new songs will be ready soon, etc, etc, blah blah.
The EP Elite
Posted by jamie on Feb 24, 2009
Josh Doyle, formerly front man for the Dum Dums, has created a new group, the EP Elite, which you can join at his site. It does cost money, but you can get EPs, T-Shirts and guestlist entry to shows.
New Four0 album ready “soon”.
Posted by jamie on Feb 24, 2009
Ah, yes. There’ll be a new Four 0 album out very soon: see the lads’ blog here.
April Conspiracy
Posted by jamie on Feb 24, 2009
The JB Conspiracy have announced some April tour dates.
Tom Craven, The Cuban Bar
Posted by jamie on Feb 20, 2009
Tom Craven
11th February, The Cuban Bar, Camden Town
If, like me, you’ve drunk in the Cuban before, but didn’t know that they put bands on, it might strike you as a little strange to go there for a gig – it did me. The Cuban is hidden away at the back of Camden stables and usually populated by South Americans and Camden Tourists rather than alternative types and music fans.
It’s a strange setting, then, for the acoustic emotive country/rock that Tom Craven plays these days: edgy, introspective and suggesting angst, he’s an odd choice for an easy going cocktail joint favoured by yabbering tourists and England-game-avoiders. That said, Tom’s amiable and laid-back stage persona offsets his music nicely, and he does a decent job of entertaining the crowd from his stage under a giant plasma showing a BBC 1 nature documentary about polar bears. Surreal? You bet.
Tom plays first, to a half-full bar and a knot of his own fans at the front, and opens with the excellent Cross My Heart, Strike Me Down and mysteriously named “Die, Elijah”, which is quickly becoming one of my very favourite Tom Craven songs, moody, powerful, almost epic in places, and constantly tugging on the heartstrings.
Midway through the set, the singalong I Fell For You gets a great reaction, singing, swaying and clapping starting and lasting largely throughout the rest of his set. I Fell For You is lush, a shamelessly sentimental, sugar-sweet lovesong as gooey as its name suggests but no less sincere for it, and perfect in its simplicity in a lovesong that is surely one of the best of its kind. Tonight, aside from Die, Elijah and the wistful, melancholic When We Were Kids, I Fell For You is a stand-out moment, yet totally different to the pints-in-the-air singalong that it’s become in Watford, where Tom is from and from where the song has borrowed its nickname, I Fell For Elton John: a reference to its Disneyishness as much as it’s Watford heritage, and that’s possibly the best way to describe it: as smushy a Can You Feel The Love Tonight? while at the same time having the substance of a Skylar, Bowling for Soup or Counting Crows lovesong.
By now some clown behind the bar has put Spain’s drubbing of England on the plasma next to Tom’s head, which, predictably, us being in the Cuban, has divided the room a little bit and taken the feelgood factor right out through the doubledoors at the far end. From this, Tom mistakenly plays his closing song, Chances, next and then is reminded he has one more. Chances is also a Tom Craven anthem and keeps the non-football-oriented crowd happy until Tom’s last last song, If Friendship Is Leaving, Leave Me Some Pie, which is written for a (male) buddy of Tom’s, who, by coincidence, is next to the stage drinking lager, add to the love-in nature that seems to appear at every Tom Craven show, and, in this instance, Tom is calling homoerotic. Ace. An big gay ending to a wonderfully surreal night.
Lily Allen: It’s Not Me, It’s You
Posted by jamie on Feb 20, 2009
Lily Allen
It’s Not Me, It’s You
There’s a dilemma I’m suffering trying to review a Lily Allen record that’s different to writing on almost anything I’ve written about before, and it’s basically this: the problem with reviewing a Lily Allen album, namely the music, the songs you here when the CD is on, is pretty difficult when there’s so much baggage around Lily and her music.
But the real dilemma is this: should I really try to write without noticing any of this anyway?
Since Lily exploded into mainstream pop consciousness with Smile and the spectacularly brilliant Alright, Still in 2006, it’s been difficult to ignore her, especially if you live or work in London. The tabloids and the freesheets have something of a fixation on Lily, and, after a while that became mutual: they’re often getting dissed in her blog and the odd pap gets kicked or told off on the way. So, it’s difficult to ignore Lily. Difficult, that is, when it isn’t possible. She’s there. All the time.
Being hounded non-stop by the tabs hasn’t helped Lily get on with making It’s Not Me, It’s You , but it’s clearly a recurring theme in the record, and the Sun get a mention in the opening lines of the first track, Everyone’s At It.
Much has been made of It’s Not Me, It’s You being an album about her ex-boyfriends, but Lily’s position as a tabloid pet has clearly made enough of an impression on her as well – its a running theme through the album’s lyrics as much as the ex-boyfriend material.
The two-and-a-bit years since Alright, Still turned Lily in to a celebrity appear to have, unsurprisingly, made a massive change in her life. Alright, Still’s “Everything’s Just Wonderful” talks about being refused a mortgage, yet soon after the record came out, she was returning fire to tabloid hacks in her blog, asking “how many of these male journalists had bought their own house before they were 23”. No need for a mortgage, I guess.
OK, five paragraphs and we’ve barely discussed the songs. But you get my point, right? Not only is the sound different to Alright, Still, but the content is different: she’s talking about different things because her life’s different and she’s in a different place, with new problems. From thelondonpaper it doesn’t look like life’s got much easier, mind. In fact, It’s Not Me, It’s You comes across as pretty angry, whether it’s the paps, the exes or the circles of the rich and famous that Lily’s never pretended to like and rips in to in INMIY’s first single, The Fear.
All of this has made the music change ever so slightly – where AS was a largely up-tempo, and occasionally cheery effort, where even downbeat words were set to catchy, upbeat songs, INMIY is moodier and more atmospheric. More attention’s gone in to the synth here, and the stomp-alongs are rarer, even if they are just as good. Not Fair, for example, and instantly enjoyable, as are Never Gonna Happen and Fuck You: great fun, deliciously catchy pop gems: her label must be tearing their hair out that one is so obviously out unsatisfying sex and one is full of swear words. This, perhaps, explains the choice of The Fear as the first single – fewer hooks and less chart-friendly all around, it’s perhaps an unlikely choice, but the song has grown on me since it came out, and, in case it’s relevant, has now been chosen for the montages on Match of the Day. Bonus.
The Fear is more in keeping with the album as a whole: more sombre, and, though it has its hooks, the music is ethereal, ambient, and, in places, almost bleak.
A quick word on Lily’s swearing: not an issue, I suspect, for many on here, but spare a thought for a reviewer on iTunes who’s upset that the language means she “can’t” let her young daughter listen to INMIY despite the fact that she (the daughter) has been eagerly waiting for it since LDN was released as a single. To put it simply, lady, Lily is not a children’s artist: ignore the graphics and the fact that her songs all chart highly and listen to them: none of them have been High School Musical, and bleeping words in Smile or LDN will become obvious to your kids once they start to actually listen to their records. OK, she’s got issues, we all have, but this is a serious record and fair play to her for tackling them “sweary rubbish” is as unfair as it is ignorant, namely very. You might as well write a letter to Jack Daniels complaining that your 6yr-old always bokes on the carpet and fights the sofa after a few too many – it’s not intended as a kids’ drink. Yeesh.
The real bonus about all this is that it highlights something that’s often been overlooked in all the hype over Lily’s relationships, partying and her range at New Look: her voice.
When first listening to Alright, Still it’s surprisingly easy, looking back, to get as far as Littlest Things without really noticing that Lily’s got an absolutely stunning voice. She’s a great singer, but it’s the very highest notes there that are really supreme, and it’s clear from pretty early in INMIY that she’s either got the license to express herself a little more, musically speaking, with these or that someone at EMI has told her to just get cracking that voice out. It’s here on INMIY in all its glory and it sounds absolutely superb, so points to whoever had that idea. 22 and I Could Say are particular highlights here – as are The Fear, and Him.
Lily’s lyrics on INMIY are as stunning as they were on A,S. If you loved the “Tesco/Alfresco” bit in LDN then look out for Him: “Caucasian/Tax Evasion” and the even more brilliantly unpredictable “Suicidal/Creedence Clearwater Revival” are only two among the many on a speculative, wistful song about God, think Joan Osbourne (or Dr Evil)’s One Of Us, but with Lily’s voice and uniquely witty way with words and you’re halfway there. It’s a gem.
INMIY is Lily Allen for 2009 on a stick, thoughtful and more outward-looking, with the world and its villains as much the subject of her acid wit and sharp rhymes as her exes and her bank manager. The attitude that made Alright Still instantly so lovable is well and truly intact, and Lily’s songs have moved a step forward both in terms of their focus and the way they’re put together. Still, though, there’s enough of what was great about Lily already: the attitude, the lyrics and the gleefully sugarry pop music; only now it’s embellished with crunchy, more powerful production and an even more impressive vocal. A must for Lily fans (obviously) and a lesson to any doubters: a seriously good quality record, and brilliant fun.
Track listing:
Everyone’s At It
The Fear
Not Fair
22
I Could Say
Back to the Start
Never Gonna Happen
Fuck You
Who’d Have Known
Reel Big Fish / Suburban Legends / Random Hand
Posted by jamie on Feb 20, 2009
Reel Big Fish
Leeds Academy, 17th February 2009
Living in Berko these days, the train to Leeds costs about £50, but is all the same a good option for gigging when big bands always put their London shows on a weekend, as pulling a sickie on a Saturday would cost me the same money and doesn’t offer a road trip. Tuesday night is a quiet one in town, despite the fact that since arriving in town at 4 I was practically tripping over other travelling punks in town for the show.
We heard but didn’t see Random Hand from the queue outside, as, despite not being sold out, the line of expectant (mostly in a non-pregnant way) punters was around the side of the building and tickets, no-tickets, collection and pay-on-the-door types all had to go in the same way. Bleh.
Inside, the Academy is a pretty posh venue, albeit it’s just reopened since Creation townie-club got shut down and everything’s new and shiny looking. The Suburban Legends are a tidy opening act, rehearsed dance moves and a Disney cover (I Just Can’t Wait To Be King) spicing up a decent set of fairly standard OC ska-punk much in the mode of RBF themselves, or, for example, the Orange County Supertones or Chase Long Beach. You get the idea: I try not to take the easy route of comparing bands to each other, but there’s clearly a book of Party-Ska-Punk-by-Numbers still outselling Harry Potter over there. I could write a column on this, mind: this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, in a room packed full of Reel Big Fish fans, a similar act will most likely go down well. Dido probably hasn’t toured with Megadeth.
Suburban Legends, anyway, go down a treat: they’re tight, have very good songs and their stage show is polished and confident. And they’re very good at getting the room going, not just by teaching us singalongs, dividing us in half and competing the two sides, etc, but just by playing good pop tunes loud and fast and going heavy on the horns. And dancing – dancing helps. Aaron Barrett appears for a guest spot on guitar, just to help things along and the night is off to a great start.
The striking thing about watching Reel Big Fish tonight is the number of songs that appear in their set: of course, recent changes to the line-up have by necessity removed the Carlos speech and Tyler Jones’ unending foolery, but, when it’s kept tight like this it’s still amazing how many tunes they can fit in. It’s also still a surprise how many great songs Reel Big Fish have and how good they are at playing live: Trendy and Alternative, Baby are surprise inclusions but work well. There’s no room for The Set-Up (You Need This) just as they left out She’s Famous Now from my first RBF show, but a balanced set touching all of their albums, though light on Monkeys For Nothing, which seems mostly to have made way for three tracks from the new covers record Fame, Fortune and Fornication, from which Don’t Need Nothing But a Good Time features the guitarist of Suburban Legends (who plays Zazu in their Lion King cover, by the way) on guitar.
There’s a bit of goofing off: Aaron wishes us all goodnight after each of the first three songs, and also goes off on an epic rant about musical integrity when some guys in Milwaukee Beers shirts (from the movie Baseketball) start shouting for Beer. But that’s it – a tight, focused, almost serious set of all-action party songs with no chat and no jokes, No Carlos speech, no Masters of All Musical Styles, I guess because Party Down hasn’t appeared, and no spiels of Aaron/Scott banter or of love for Matt Wong. Of course, we get more songs for out ticket money, but it’s nice that Suburban Legends entertained us a bit. I don’t have the list, but they only played about six songs in their half-hour.
Reel Big Fish, though, are superb. The same big, big songs are out again, and the newer songs and covers sound strong. It’s strictly songs, but that’s a strength for them too: they’ve simply got a massive collection of great party songs that kick off when they play live. And they play them well. Great songs, great band, great show.
SETLIST
Trendy
Another FU Song
The Kids Don’t Like It
Suckers
Enter the Sandman
The New Version of You
The Bad Guy
(Friday Nght Cover)
She’s Famous Now
Alternative, Baby
A Little Dobt Goes A Long Way
Don’t Start A Band
(Everybody Plays Guitar)
You Don’t Know
She Has A Girlfriend Now
Don’t Need Nothing, But A Good Time
Good Thing
Your Guts (I Hate ‘em)
Where Have You Been
Bak In Back>Beer
-ENCORE-
Everything Sucks
Monkey Man
Sell Out
Take On Me
Exit Avenue on the radio..
Posted by jamie on Feb 20, 2009
Exit Avenue are live on BBC Three Counties tonight (Friday).
Listen at bbc. co. uk/threecounties - click listen live between 7-8pm.
new Grown At Home songs
Posted by jamie on Feb 20, 2009
Grown At Home are previewing songs from their forthcoming EP here. GAH will announce “lots of real cool changes” on 1st March.
